FinSec Joseph Waight: “You Have to Borrow to Develop”

Joseph Waight

We also asked Financial Secretary, Joseph Waight, about the loans that the Briceño Administration has borrowed. The United Democratic Party has made it a point to criticize the government for borrowing several loans, totaling hundreds of millions of dollars, in three years. In our conversation with Financial Secretary Joseph Waight, we asked him if there should be concerns about the amount of loans that Belize is borrowing. Here is his response.

Joseph Waight, Financial Secretary

“You have to borrow to develop. No country of our size can generate the surpluses required to do your capital investment. The question is, you’ve tried to borrow from the sources that are as concessionary as possible and apply that to projects that have a good either financial rate of return or social rate of return. And sometimes you have to prioritize, you have to choose, you have to choose, okay, you know, you need investment in health, you need education, you need infrastructure, but you try to choose. It’s a very challenging process because there are multiple needs and wants, all of them by themselves are merit. So any government, regardless of political flavor, has a job ahead of them to determine how they’re going to finance their way going forward, especially the capital investment, investment in human capital, investment in physical capital, that type of thing. You borrow the money. You invest it into a project. The project will have a rate of return to help repay maybe a financial or economic rate of return. If it expands the growth in the economy, that will help pay it back. I mean, the problem is not to borrow more than you can repay.”

Hipolito Novelo

“So, how far away have we stepped back away from that financial cliff?”

Joseph Waight

“Well, you know, the thing is, it’s a flow of money. You borrow and you disburse over time. In the meantime, you’re repaying all loans. So I think the debt to GDP ratio is stable at around 70 percent right now.”