Belize and Caribbean States Meet With IMF and World Bank
Belize and the wider Caribbean are holding a series of meetings with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to discuss special vulnerability and debt relief. Belize as a low-lying coastal nation, also sits in the path of hurricanes and other natural phenomena such as flooding caused by climate change. And over the past thirty years, small islands and countries in this region have put forth the argument that their small economies do not allow for recovery from these recurring natural disasters without assistance. Belize ranks third in the region for being a risk for being impacted by a natural disaster and fifth for suffering from climate change effects. Combined with the wrath of Mother Nature is also the COVID pandemic and its impact on economies. Belize and these countries are looking for some debt relief, as Minister of State in the Ministry of Finance, Chris Coye explained to News Five today.
Chris Coye
Chris Coye, Minister of State, Finance
“The key issue for all these vulnerable countries, they suffer from these natural disasters all the time, so they spend a whole lot of money trying to recover from these natural disasters. So, they don’t all have the money, so they have to borrow. And one of the twin problems, because of climate change, they end up borrowing a lot of money, and because they end up borrowing, they have high debt, unsustainable debt. So, even before COVID-19, a lot of these small states already had high debt. And with COVID-19 now, that made it that much more difficult. Some now have unsustainable debt. Belize, that is the issue that we are dealing with. We might think Belize is a poor developing country. We have a high debt, our income per capita is five thousand per annum. But, by international standards, we are considered middle income. We are considered a middle income country, so we don’t get eligible for concessionary funding from certain multilateral entities, so we don’t benefit from cheaper financing. When these things hit us it has a severe impact on us, and so because of that we should be eligible for debt relief. And that is where the focus has been. You don’t measure just by income but you measure by the vulnerabilities. And finally, I think, in fact the IMF now in these meetings are saying that they agree. And so we reach that point where small countries are now—will be treated or considered for their vulnerabilities they have and so they will have access to more concessionary financing.”
Coye says that he believes Belize should benefit from grants and concessionary loans as well from the World Bank and these will be areas that we will be pursuing with these organizations.
