Why Didn’t Belize Try to Access IMF’S RFI Programme?

Kalilah Enriquez-Reynolds

The Prime Minister has said that Belize will get in the range of one hundred million dollars from the international financial institutions to assist with COVID-19. The funding, however, is coming in spurts as the economy continues to shrink.  Kalilah Enriquez Reynolds is a well-known Belizean who is the Business Editor at Nationwide News Network of Jamaica; Reynolds appeared via Skype on Open Your Eyes morning progamme today to discuss, among other things, the newly introduced Treasury Note and the Caribbean experience with COVID-19 from a financial perspective. One of the things Reynolds pointed out is fact that Belize did not seek out a special financing programme available through the IMF. Reynolds notes that half of the applicant countries have been approved for the funding which comes with a low interest rate.

Kalilah Enriquez-Reynolds, Business Journalist

“I was surprised that Belize hasn’t approached the IMF for funding, because the IMF has something called the Rapid Financing Instrument, the RFI. Something like a hundred and two countries had applied to the IMF for the Rapid Financing Instrument for funding under that. What that is, it’s that they’ve been approving the requests really quickly. They have something like a hundred billion US dollars earmarked for on lending to member countries and it comes without the usual strings that are attached to IMF programmes. So, you know in Belize we are familiar with standby arrangements and so on and usually have these strict conditions that would accompany an IMF programme; so you have to have a primary surplus of a certain amount; or you have various things that you need to do – you might need to raise taxes or devalue your dollar – whatever the conditions are – or cut public wages; retrenchment and all that stuff. So, the RFI doesn’t come with those strings because it is a type of emergency financing and the interest rate is less than one percent. So, I am surprised Belize isn’t one of the countries that approached the IMF about this. Jamaica has. Jamaica recently got five hundred and twenty million US dollars from the IMF under the RFI. I know Barbados was recently approved for it as well, the Bahamas and several countries around the world as well. Like I said, one hundred and two – the last I checked- had applied. Up until the end of May about fifty had been approved and it doesn’t come with the same conditions. So, I am not sure what the hesitation was; perhaps it just this perception that the IMF is bad why Belize didn’t approach them. But, I do note that we have approached other multilaterals and been approved for lending.”