Taxpayers Must Prepare for “Restructuring”

Dean Barrow

The government said last week that the economy is in dire straits and is severely underperforming. With the proposed restructuring of the existing debt, there is anticipation that a tax increase may be on the table in 2017 budget. 

Prime Minister Dean Barrow

“We’re both in this and stuck with the arrangement which sees Belize as the debtor vis-à-vis these creditors who are the holders of the bonds.  We are not looking to shaft the creditors, we are not looking to screw the bondholders.  We are looking to ensure that our country finally obtains the relief that is for us a sort of… the belief that for us is absolutely critical.  We believe that there is a way to do this without utterly, as it were, seeing off the bondholders.  Clearly adjustments will have to be made but these are big people, these are experienced players in the market.  They can understand as well as we do that circumstances change and circumstances have changed; apart from everything else there’s been the hurricane.  So we might be perhaps, from one point of view, a little too optimistic, but we genuinely are convinced that we can do this, that we can work this thing out and reach a place that is going to be ultimately satisfactory to Belize without fundamentally prejudicing the bondholders.”

Reporter

“Sir, are we moving towards a trajectory to a place of increased taxes next fiscal year, given all the financial pressures additionally with the hurricane?”

Prime Minister Dean Barrow

“Well, we’ve made no secret of the fact that there will have to be a degree of fiscal consolidation.  So there’s going to have to be a tax restructuring, as well as a bond restructuring exercise that we will need to undertake, that we have already started on.”