Philipsburg:--- At the Council of Ministers' press briefing on Wednesday, Finance Minister Roland Tuitt said that he has been hearing rumors which state that the current coalition government NA/DP/IND will increase Turn over Tax (TOT). The Finance Minister said he is addressing the issue because there is no truth to the rumors regarding the increase of TOT. "There is absolutely no truth to that so I want to put an end to that rumor regarding the increase of TOT." Tuitt said that the current coalition has a coalition agreement called "Working for the People" and instead of increasing taxes they are looking at ways to make certain changes which will allow people to go home with more monies in their pockets. He said he is currently working with the tax department to make certain adjustments which would benefit workers.Treasury Investments.
In an unrelated item, the Minister of Finance said he is also looking at the government's treasury. Tuitt said he is of the opinion that government did not pay much attention to its treasury neither they did they realize the importance of the treasury. He said government has 65 million guilders that are invested in CDs with the banks. As an example, Tuitt said that if government had invested its monies in other projects that would give at least one percent in returns, then government would have had more than half of a million guilders annually in profit (Naf. 650,000.00) on the 65 million guilders they have on CDs. He said because the former government did not look at ways of increasing their revenues they were losing monies. Minister Tuitt further explained that his Ministry is now collecting its taxes and they will find ways of investing it so they can achieve the maximum out of its investments.
Central Bank Impasse.
The Minister of Finance also told reporters on Wednesday that he will be seeking a meeting with Curacao's Minister of Finance to work on the impasse of the Central Bank.
The Finance Minister said to date, the 2012 budget of the Central Bank has not yet been approved and the board of the Central Bank sent a request to the governments of St. Maarten and Curacao so that they could get together, hammer out the problems facing the Central Bank, and get it back on course.
In the meantime, the board of directors of the Central Bank requested that the President of the Central Bank Emsley Tromp be suspended some weeks ago but St. Maarten has not yet taken a decision on the request of the board of the Central Bank. When questioned about that on Wednesday, Tuitt said that the government of St. Maarten is busy gathering information on the matter but since the matter is somewhat "ticklish" he will not divulge how government intends to gather the information they need.
CFT Requests Back up Information --- Finance Ministry working on Amendments.
The Minister of Finance also updated reporters on the events surrounding the CFT and the 2012 budget that the Parliament of St. Maarten (UP/DP) approved some months ago. Minister Tuitt said that he sent a letter to the CFT on June 14th in which he provided the answers to the questions they posed on the budget. However, four days later the CFT sent another letter asking government to provide documents to back up the answers he submitted to the questions they asked earlier. Tuitt said he knew that the CFT would have asked for those documents and that is why they are working feverishly on finalizing the amendments to the budget.
Tuitt said that the CFT even placed two persons at their disposal to assist them in making the budget amendments for the COLA payments and the shortfall of taxes which created a deficit in the budget.
The COLA payments he said will be paid out in July 2012 instead of June. Minister Tuitt said the vacation allowances were paid this month and if government had paid the COLA this month then the civil servants would have had to pay much more taxes than usual.
