On a Thursday evening in mid-May, Suriname’s Minister of Finance and Planning Adelien Wijnerman stood before the National Assembly to defend the administration’s controversial proposal to postpone the full enforcement of the 2024 Public Finance Accounting Law until the 2029 fiscal year.
Minister Wijnerman argued that critical regulatory frameworks, administrative digital systems and institutional preparedness measures remain far from complete for the new legislation to take full effect. Until the end of the 2028 fiscal cycle, the 2019 version of the Public Finance Accounting Law will remain in force to govern government budgeting and financial reporting processes. After hours of extensive parliamentary debate, lawmakers voted to adjourn further deliberation on the proposal until the following Tuesday.
Rossellie Cotino, chair of the committee of rapporteurs from the National Democratic Party (NDP), outlined the sequence of events that led the current government to request the delay. According to Cotino, the 2026 fiscal budget circulars should have been distributed to all government ministries by May 2025 under the original 2024 law timeline. When the current administration took office, however, it found that the entire 2026 budget had already been drafted in alignment with the 2019 law’s requirements.
This left the finance minister with two unappealing options: withdraw all completed budget documents and restart the entire drafting process under the new regulations, or ask the National Assembly to grant an extension to the 2024 law’s implementation. Cotino explained that policymakers ultimately opted for a legislative amendment to delay implementation because an on-the-ground assessment found almost no meaningful preparatory work had been completed to make the new law operational.
Cotino detailed a long list of bottlenecks that currently block full rollout of the reform. Multiple mandatory implementing regulations, budget guidelines and institutional overhauls are still missing. Ministry-level Budget and Financial Affairs (BFZ) departments are not adequately trained or structured to take on their expanded new responsibilities under the law.
Other unresolved issues include the lack of formalized inter-ministerial collaboration protocols, standardized financial processes, rules for audit committees, budget administration frameworks and asset management systems. Staff training programs have not yet been developed, and the country’s current Integrated Financial Management System (IFMS) does not meet the reporting requirements set out by international International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS), which the new law mandates adoption of.
The proposal has drawn fierce pushback from the opposition. VHP party leader Asis Gajadien argued that the delay amounts to a full retreat to the outdated old financial system and puts critical much-needed public finance reforms on hold. He warned that as Suriname prepares to receive substantial future oil revenue, the country cannot afford to weaken public financial discipline or erode state institutional capacity.
Gajadien contended that implementation challenges should not be an excuse to suspend reform efforts, but rather a motivation to speed up rollout work. Instead of a multi-year delay, he called for a phased implementation of the 2024 law, paired with clear binding deadlines, concrete implementing arrangements and mandatory annual progress reports to the National Assembly.
In response, Minister Wijnerman reaffirmed the current government’s commitment to eventually implementing the 2024 accounting law, but stressed that a thorough assessment confirms the country cannot meet all legal requirements for the 2026, 2027 and 2028 fiscal cycles. Key outstanding mandates required by the new law that are still missing include a five-year financial plan, a budget policy memorandum, formal budget rules, and primary expenditure ceilings.
The minister also emphasized the need for sweeping changes to government processes and digital infrastructure across all departments. Full implementation of the law requires a structured, step-by-step approach and major upgrades to human capacity, IT systems and financial workflows across all ministries. Based on the government’s detailed implementation roadmap, the administration has concluded that a three-year preparation period is necessary before the law can take full effect in 2029.