News
2 min.
As the global COVID19 pandemic remains subject to change, so do the related help and relief packages for countries all around the world. As far as the Caribbean Netherlands are concerned, the central Dutch government has announced this week that the help packages for Aruba, Curaçao and Sint-Maarten will be extended until at least October 2023. Repayment conditions and schedules will be discussed after that.
Interest-free loans
At the very start of the worldwide corona pandemic back in March of 2020, the Dutch government provided financial support for the Caribbean parts of the Kingdom in the form of interest-free loans without a fixed repayment schedule. The total packages amounted to just over a billion Euros divided as following over the three previously mentioned islands: €448,2 million was sent to Curaçao, €441,7 million to Aruba, and €141,7 was received by Sint-Maarten. The purpose of these loan facilities was to help the local governments deal with the inevitable wave of bankruptcies and unemployment.
These loans were initially ending on the 10th of April of this year, but that period has just been extended by eighteen months. The considerable financial support packages are not without conditions, though, with the main one being a 12,6% pay cut for government employees working for the local authorities in Aruba, Curaçao and Sint-Maarten. Aruba has already explored the possibility of decreasing that percentage, but the Dutch government was not yet open to the suggestion. As long as the local governments are using centrally provided corona help packages, the percentage will remain at 12,6%.
The basis for this article was originally published on www.nu.nl in March 2022.
