The public entity Saba increased its liquidity position in 2022 to US $64.3 million by late December and booked a surplus of $1.4 million.

Of this amount, $61.6 mil­lion is earmarked as special allowances from the Dutch government. This means that the public entity Saba has $2.7 million in freely dispos­able means, which the Com­mittee for Financial Supervi­sion CFT called a “positive development”.

The fourth Execution Re­port 2022 showed $30.1 mil­lion in revenues and $28.7 million in expenditures, in­cluding special allowances. “With this, Saba realises a preliminary surplus of $1.4 million for the year 2022,” stated the CFT in a letter early March in response to the fourth Execution Report. Saba complies with the fi­nancial law FinBES which requires that a budget has to be balanced. Originally, the 2022 budget showed a zero result. The positive prelimi­nary result of $1.4 million was due to two factors: the structural increase of the free allowance and the extra funds that were received for the implementation of the Nature and Environment Policy Plan Caribbean Neth­erlands.

The public entity Saba plans to add part of the $1.4 million surplus, namely the funds that were not used for the Nature and Environment Policy Plan, to the allocation reserve for the execution of this plan. The other part of the preliminary surplus, coming from the structural increase of the free allow­ance, will be added to the allocation reserve for main­tenance and investments. The additional means from the free allowance and the Nature and Environment Policy Plan were only allo­cated to Saba in the second half of 2022. Due to a lack of implementation capacity and inadequate planning, these means could not be fully spent in 2022.

Up to and including the fourth quarter of 2022, Saba realised $19.4 million in regular revenues, which was $1.5 million more than stated in the budget. The revenues from local levies, the room tax, transport of students and construction fees, were lower than budgeted.

Saba realised $9.1 million in regular expenditures, which was $3 million less than origi­nally budgeted. According to the public entity Saba, the re­alisation remained behind as a result of the lack of imple­mentation capacity.

“The CFT understands that filling vacancies and strengthening the imple­mentation capacity is no easy job,” CFT Chairperson Lidewijde Ongering stated in her letter to the public entity Saba. The CFT did have a few recommendations, which it asked Saba to work on.

The Daily Herald.