Ballooning UHS Debt Can’t Be Paid Out of the Public Purse

Dean Barrow

The PM has taken the view that the judgment from the Caribbean Court of Justice which ruled that the loan is legal, cannot be paid from the consolidated revenue fund unless the National Assembly votes to so do.  Before today, cabinet members had public said they would vote ‘NO.’  

Prime Minister Dean Barrow

“This bill has been brought to the House in furtherance of what the Executive certainly considered to be its duty to ask the House to consider the question of voting monies to what I might refer to in shorthand terms as the UHS/Belize Bank debt.  We conceived it to be our duty because of course after this matter has been through arbitration with various appeals with respect to that process having as well been exhausted.  After the matter has been examined and ruled on by our local courts, by the courts here in Belize, after the validity of that so-called debt has been rejected by the Supreme Court of Belize, by the Court of Appeal of Belize, but mirabilis dictu, wonderful to relate, upheld by the Caribbean Court of Justice. It clearly is now the duty of this House to make its pronouncements on whether it not it will vote the funds to pay this debt.”