This is another consequence of the central government's motion of censure: New Caledonian communities find themselves in increased uncertainty for 2025. If the end-of-management budget for 2024 was adopted in Parliament, there is no visibility on revenues expected next year.
The fall of Michel Barnier's government on Wednesday December 4, 2024, brings New Caledonia into a most complicated situation. The economic consequences of this censorship are multiple, both for economic recovery and for public policies.
Gil Brial, 2nd vice-president of the Southern province, does not hide his concern. According to the elected official, the country finds itself facing two problems. There is “an emergency and an extreme emergency, that is to say how do we close the budgets of communities by the end of the year? Thanks to the work of Nicolas Metzdorf in Paris, there was a draft law end of management which was voted on an hour before the fall of the government, which will bring 27 billion to New Caledonia.”
A sum of money intended for “save Ruamm, pay Cafat unemployment, save Enercal via the hospitals, and then save all the communities of New Caledonia, provinces and communes (..) If the Congress of New Caledonia votes for DM6 (bill which will validate this 27 billion aid to the territory) This week we should be able to sort that out.“
There remains the 2025 budget that the Southern province will vote on next week. “Here again, we still have many, many uncertainties. And so, we have been working since yesterday to imagine solutions with those who are our interlocutors. And it is true that we no longer have too many interlocutors in the government Today. “
During the last budgetary debate in the Southern province, Gil Brial announced that if state aid did not arrive, several social measures could be eliminated. A specter always feared. “If we do not obtain aid as planned by the State, of one billion euros for the whole of New Caledonia, we find ourselves presenting a budget where we close all the medical-social centers , the old dispensaries, where we no longer pay grants in New Caledonia, where we no longer have cultural or sporting associations, where we go from a budget of 56 billion to 41 billion.”
Without state aid of one billion euros, the Caledonian system will collapse. This is the real collateral damage of the fall of the government.
Gil Brial, vice-president of the Southern province.
Town halls are not left out. After several months of difficult adaptation to the drop in funding, very tough decisions were made, such as the suspension of funding for canteens and school transport.
“We can expect worse” says Florence Rolland, mayor of La Foa. “We have reformed everything we could reform over the last few weeks with the aim of having a little oxygen, particularly through the finance bill.”
[La chute du gouvernement central] This is very bad news for New Caledonia. This is very bad news for the municipalities.
Florence Rolland, mayor of La Foa
Faced with the parliamentary work carried out to allow the transfer of 27 billion in favor of New Caledonia, Florence Rolland welcomes it but believes that “It's a tiny part that will be reserved for the municipalities, which will allow us to pay our additional cents, but that won't save the common soldier. That's a reality. So after a while, we no longer know We are supposed to prepare our 2025 budgets, but we don't know how.
A fear shared by the mayor of Touho, Alphonse Poinine. “We have the same concerns, the same fears” recognizes the vice-president of the mayors association of New Caledonia. And to continue, “We are in a situation of cessation of payments. This means that on December 31, when the budgets close, we will not have the information from the State or the government for the preparation of 2025”.
The report by Alix Maddec and Marion Thellier:
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