Barrow Says IMF Can’t Tell Belize Anything…

Dean Barrow

At his lengthy press conference the Prime Minister was also asked, as he routinely is, about the state of the economy. There have been unprecedented injections of mostly Petrocaribe sourced cash into the country’s infrastructure – roads and buildings across the country. But despite massive spending on infrastructure, the economy continues to record negligible growth, and the IMF has been critical, especially where debt sustainability is concerned. But PM Barrow wasn’t impressed…in fact, he was the farthest thing from impressed. He told the media today that the IMF isn’t in a position to tell the government anything at all…and even if they do, he’s not hearing it.

Prime Minister Dean Barrow

“I wouldn’t set too much store by what the IMF says you know and I am in the happy position where I can say that without any fear of backlash or consequences because I am in no program with them, have no need to get into any program with them and we therefore in this government and in this country are our own masters. They can say what they want, they can draw the conclusions that you say they are drawing with respect to debt sustainability…we know what we are about, we know how we will deal with that and one thing that I could signal from now is being very actively contemplated is not another debt restructuring, but some form of a debt buy back with the super-bond or with whatever. We have looked at the longer term scenario and we have every confidence and it is a confidence born of the fact that we successfully…and I don’t care what they say…successfully restructured the super-bond when they were insisting that we could not do it unless we entered into an IMF austerity program…can they tell us anything.”