Cabinet Concludes Two-day Retreat to Discuss Government’s Plan for 2023
The Briceño administration has concluded a two-day retreat during which Cabinet discussed several priority areas, including the country’s economic performance, inflation, as well as crime and violence. It is the second meeting of its kind where senior government officials gather to plan the year ahead. Late this evening, News Five spoke by phone with Prime Minister John Briceño who touched briefly on the issues that were addressed during the plenary sessions.
Prime Minister John Briceño
On the phone: Prime Minister John Briceño
“As a government, as a cabinet, we decided that we need to take some time out of the office so that we can concentrate and looking at the accomplishments and the challenges and what suppose to be our priorities for the new financial year. We did it last year and we did it today and I think by any measure you take, that the People’s United [Party] government has been quite successful, much more successful than anybody would have thought, considering the challenges that we were facing, from reducing unemployment to a record low of five percent, growing the economy to twelve point five percent in 2021, 2022 seemed to be between twelve to eight percent. We have managed to reduce our national debt by over a billion dollars. We have record investments in agriculture, in housing, in tourism and we can say that as a government, we have regained the confidence of the Belizean people and the investment community. We’ve even, despite the fact that we ended the year with some gruesome murders, you know, in Belmopan and San Pedro, there was quick response from the police and it seems that we caught the alleged perpetrators in both cases. But even the police, we have seen that the numbers have decreased to its lowest levels of murders, probably since 2012. So we have to admit, you know, that we have these successes. But challenges continue and it’s important for us to be able to discuss as a group, make presentations to the group and then from there trying to come up with what would be the priorities for the next fiscal year.”
