PM Explains Steps Being Taken to Keep Cost of Living As Low as Possible

The cost of living has been a hot-button issue since before the COVID pandemic subsided. Since then, other events, such as the high cost of fuel, freight costs, and the war in Ukraine have prolonged the inflation that Belize and the rest of the world are experiencing. Nonetheless, there are measures governments can take to ease the burden on their people. Following last Friday’s House Meeting, News Five asked Prime Minister John Briceño for an update on the government’s lowering of fuel prices in Belize as well as how we are tackling cost of living, generally.

Prime Minister John Briceño

Prime Minister John Briceño

“Last year, we gave up over 30 million dollars. We are reducing the price slowly, not fast enough – a bit – but we’re trying to get back a little bit of that money so that we can continue to do the work of the government. I mean, there’s so many needs in this country. The Honorable Member from Albert knows full well that we import our inflation because most of the items that we consume, we import. So whenever inflation goes up in the United States, it affects us here in Belize. For some time we’ve been discussing back and forth in Cabinet, so finally we decided, we put together Minister Dolores and Minister Abe Mai to look at the food basket and what can we do to be able to hold down the price. So today, we are now in Cabinet to announce, we are going to increase the goods that we want to maintain the margins, which is 15%, from 7 items 40 items. And, we are also meeting with the importers and what we will be doing with them, comparing what they’re paying to customs and what they’re seeing it cost to be able to sell to the world, to the retailers, because in many instances it is alleged that some of them reduce that price when they’re paying customs and then increase it when they’re selling. So we have to find ways on how to do that. The Public Service Union has been helpful. They’re saying, you know, we prepare to be able to issue tickets, so we’ve changed legislation to be able to do the ticketing. We’re going to get a person that’s going to be the one, for want of a better word, the anti-inflations are to be able to start to train them. We want to set up a WhatsApp hotline where cause consumers can take pictures and send it to us and then we can go and investigate. We have to do from different angles to try to see how it could hold on the cost of living as best as we possibly can.

best as we possibly can.”