Jose Mai says consumers will pay

One man who heartily agrees with the Belize Agro-Productive Sector Group is Orange Walk South representative and farmers’ advocate Jose Mai. He tells News Five that it is consumers who will really pay because of the state of affairs in agriculture. He also questioned whether Government was properly advised prior to the Budget announcement.

Jose Abelardo Mai, Area Rep., Orange Walk South

Jose Abelardo Mai

“There are no small farmers who do crop-dusting. There’s no small farmer who owns an airplane; there’s no small farmer who owns a combine harvester. There are people that have heavy investment in these equipment – airplane dusters and in harvesters. And what they do, they go out and they take on contract jobs, so they harvest thirty acres for this farmer, twenty acres for that farmer, for our small farmers. So they are now passing on that G.S.T. bill to that small farmer. And the farmer, then automatically the price of his corn being harvested is up by twelve and a half percent, so he will pass that on to the consumer. And at the end of the day, the consumer is going to pay, the price of food is going to go up.”