John Briceño Says Barrow Administration is Broke

John Briceño

As we showed you in our newscast, G.O.B. has orchestrated a hurried divesting of shares to raise cash and the Opposition seized on it to reiterate that the Barrow administration is broke. P.U.P. Leader John Briceño says it’s clear for anyone to see, and they can start by taking a look at the productive sector.

John Briceño, P.U.P. Leader

“For instance, sugar – the price has plummeted. Right now it’s just a little over forty dollars when it was at seventy-five dollars a ton last year. Citrus – the production continues to go down considerably every year. One time, we were at seven million boxes of citrus. We’re down to five million boxes of citrus. Bananas – we’ve just lost about twenty percent of our production. At the Free Zone it continues to go down. Many people are predicting that by next year we might not even have a Free Zone. We are waiting to see what the report will be from the Statistical Institute of Belize (SIB). We’re waiting for that to see what is going to be the new unemployment rate and to see how the economy is performing both in exports and importation. We know that last year alone our foreign currency reduced by more than one hundred and fifty million dollars. We know that the government has maxed out its credit card with the Central Bank, so to speak. They have borrowed – I think it’s in excess of one hundred and forty million dollars just last year alone in Treasury Notes and Treasury Bills, and this year in January they went to Parliament to increase the levels of borrowing. So we know that is where they are going. Pretty much the government has been printing money to keep them afloat and this is unsustainable. The government has no plan as to what is it they are going to do to get us out of this tough economic time.”