4 Loan Motions Passed by Senate, including a C.D.B. Loan to Service Debt
Michael Peyrefitte
The Senate met today in Belmopan on four loan motions that were tabled in the House last Friday and were passed after heated debate. Government is borrowing a total of about sixty million Belize dollars, to be used mostly in response to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. The first motion brought before the Upper Chamber was a loan of thirty million dollars from the Caribbean Development Bank to service a loan payment outstanding to the C.D.B. Attorney General Michael Peyrefitte says it is at an interest of one percent and will ease the government from using money from the public purse. Doctor Carla Barnett, who is a former VP of the C.D.B., explains that the loan is not for any project nor is it new money.
Michael Peyrefitte, Attorney General
“We’re not getting thirty million dollars, yo know. That’s not what is happening. What is happening is we owe an amount of money to the C.D.B. and all we are doing is we are getting a loan from the very same C.D.B. to service the loan that we already have with them so that we don’t have to take our revenue that we have garnered internally to pay that loan so we can use that revenue that we have locally to finance the COVID-19 efforts.”
Carla Barnett
Dr. Carla Barnett, U.D.P. Senator
“I.M.F., World Bank, C.D.B., I.D.B. – they don’t normally restructure debt. But all of the institutions have been trying to help all of the countries as best as they can because across the world we have seen a reduction in economic activity, therefore a reduction in revenue, therefore a reduction in the ability of countries to service debt. So what C.D.B. really is doing here is saying you all would have paid X amount of dollars between July of 2020 and June of 2021, which for us is fifteen million U.S. dollars. You would have had to repay that to us. What we will do is lend you that money so you do not have to take out any of your reduced revenue to pay us back because we know that multilateral debt tends to rank high among the payments that government has to make every year. So that’s all that this is. It’s not tied to a specific project because it is for servicing debt.”
