P.M.: we face ?Serious financial constraints?
He presides over a sixteen member Cabinet in which at least seven ministers neither trust him, nor enjoy his trust. The Opposition, numerically weak and hardly in fighting trim, has him on the defensive. And the public, although employed in record numbers with the lowest tax burden in modern history, appears at best indifferent and at worst downright hostile to his leadership. It is no surprise, then, that Prime Minister Said Musa’s state of the nation address was long on explanation and short on bluster. Patrick Jones reports from Belmopan.
Patrick Jones, Reporting
The eighteen point presentation touched a wide range of issues including the state of public finances, the economy, health, sports and culture. The Prime Minister prefaced his forty-five minute address by saying that a slow down in global economic growth has also adversely affected the local economy, which depends heavily on external demands for our products.
Prime Minister Said Musa
?When the global interest rates increase as they have recently, it raises our interest payments unexpectedly. Then, of course, there is the continuing shock of the dismantling preferential access to industrial countries for our traditional agricultural commodities like sugar and bananas.?
The Prime Minister did not dodge the issue of Social Security, maintaining that while securitizing loans for private interests, was a calculated risk, it was one necessary to fulfil the PUP manifesto and bring greater benefit to the people.
?So yes, it was a calculated risk for Social Security Board to hold mortgages for some one thousand eight hundred individual homeowners valued at approximately fifty-three million dollars. But we had a promise and a commitment to keep: to provide much needed new homes for thousands of Belizean families. Yes, it was a calculated risk to lend the DFC forty-three million dollars of SSB money. But a significant portion of this was on lent in the form of student loans to help young Belizeans to get a tertiary education. It also included loans to the credit unions, the tourism sector and the agricultural sector as a direct investment in the human resources and productive sector of Belize.?
As to the guarantee of thirty-one million dollars in loans to facilitate the setting up of Intelco, Prime Minister Musa said government has been informed that BTL will be purchasing the assets of the defunct telephone company and that the sale will account for the principal part of the Godfrey group?s outstanding debt securitized through social security. On the issue of fiscal performance, Musa said government has implemented a plan of action to reduce the overall deficit by curtailing public expenditure and improved collections. This, coupled with refinancing from banks in the US and Caribbean and a helping hand from Taiwan, is expected to ease the debt-servicing burden.
Said Musa
?The process of debt refinancing has already begun with the Royal Bank of Trinidad and Tobago for US one hundred million dollars and the International Bank of Miami for US forty million dollars. The proceeds from the RBTT one hundred million US will be sued to refinance government debt in addition to mortgage securitizations of the DFC. Sixty-five million US will be used to retire the four securitizations tranches for DFC. The remaining amount will be used to retire other existing high cost debt and increase the international reserve position. The Government of the Republic of China (Taiwan) will also be assisting Belize with an additional twenty million this year as part of our debt-restructuring programme. We are most grateful to President Chen and his government.?
Over the first seven months of the year, the PM said that the agriculture sector performed as expected, accounting for over two hundred million dollars in foreign exchange earnings and projections are for earnings to reach four hundred and fifty million dollars by the end of the fiscal year. Other highlights of the PM?s speech included health, housing and national security.
Health
Said Musa
?At the primary health care level, our immunization indicators are beyond ninety percent coverage and by the end of the year we will achieve ninety-five percent coverage for all vaccines nationwide. Our continued success in providing expanded immunization coverage was acknowledged in November last year when Belize was awarded first place honours in the Caribbean for our EPI surveillance system. Road traffic accidents continue to be the biggest cause of deaths. Over the past year, through the transport department, we have conducted an aggressive public awareness campaign using road signs and television ads aimed at improving road safety thereby reducing road traffic accidents and fatalities that negatively impact the work force and ultimately the economy.?
?Included in our pro-poor policies should be a practical and straight-forward reform programme, backed up by legislation, that regularizes informal property rights of low-income and subsistence workers in order to enable as many property holders as possible to access credit. We have received an IDB technical cooperation grant of US three hundred thousand dollars to update and strengthen Belize?s current National Poverty Elimination Strategy and Action Plan, and to support the implementation of the strategy and action plan for 2003-2008.?
Housing
Said Musa
?One of our most important manifesto promises is to provide five thousand low income houses with repayments not exceeding two hundred dollars per month. This programme is underway. Applications for one hundred and forty houses with mortgage payments of two hundred dollars per month for first time homeowners have been approved at the Mahogany Heights residential area. Fifty-four of these homeowners are public officers, thirty are police officers, twelve are members of the Belize Defence Force, ten are teachers, and thirty-four are other self employed persons.?
National Security
Said Musa
?The new and modern forensic laboratory will become operational shortly and should be an important and effective asset in the ongoing struggle against the criminal elements in our society. Through the Crime Control Council, we have been working with the wider community in our crime fighting efforts. We are pleased with the kind of collaboration that came with the programme to get guns off the streets, led by the Chamber of Commerce and the Crimestoppers initiative, led by the Rotary Club of Belize. These are excellent examples of the national and community approach that is required if we are to succeed in keeping the criminals off our streets.?
The Prime Minister concluded his state of the nation address by informing the nation that regrettably, the Guatemalan claim to Belize remains the number one foreign policy concern for his government and hinted that perhaps the time has come to take the process one step further.
Said Musa
?As you are aware, we have been advised by some of the most distinguished international lawyers in the world that our case is a very strong one. Perhaps, the time has come for us to seriously consider taking this matter to the International Court of Justice. But that, of course, is a matter that we would have to put to you the people in a national referendum.?
In the end, the Prime Minister called for national unity in the face of what he called the common enemies of poverty, ignorance, crime, and violence, the scourge of drugs and the deadly disease of HIV and AIDS. ?Our country calls not for the life of ease, the Prime Minister said, but for the life of strenuous endeavour. Patrick Jones, for News Five.
As has become traditional, the Opposition members of the National Assembly boycotted today’s ceremonial session. There was some grassroots political activity today in Belmopan, however, as a group of protestors picketed against what it claimed was discrimination by Belmopan’s mayor in the distribution of housing lots in the Garden City.
