What is the Briceño Administration Doing About Inflation?

On the phone: Prime Minister John Briceño

Higher prices on goods and services continue to be an issue that affects the pockets of all Belizeans. Notwithstanding solid fiscal performance, crushing inflation remains a sore point for many. While it was brought up during the Cabinet retreat, what is the Briceño administration planning to do about this crisis in the months ahead?  That’s what we asked the prime minister following the round of meetings.

On the phone: Prime Minister John Briceño

“It is something that is very concerning to us as a government, but we need to appreciate and understand that we import most of our inflation because a lot of what we consume is imported, but because we are pegged to the U.S. dollar and the U.S. has one of the lowest levels of inflation in the region, our inflation is not as high as in Central America.  And so, we are going to end up with a little under seven percent rate of inflation, about 6.9 percent.  Now 6.9 percent is still too high, way too high and we are trying to find ways on how we can minimize that effect.  One: we have increased the minimum wage to five dollars which is another major accomplishment that we promised under Plan Belize.  We were looking at the taxes whilst most of our food products faced very little taxes, so there’s not much that we can do there.  We have been reducing the tax on fuel so that we can try to hold it down to thirteen dollars.  So we are doing everything that we can, we’re still getting a number of reports where people believe that there’s price gouging and that’s a bit, I think that’s the frustration that I don’t think we’ve managed to come up with a proper plan of action on how we can address the issue of price gouging where it exists.”