G.O.B. Explains Source of First $200 Million Due in 8 Days

Dean Barrow

In our previous newscast, we brought you the basics of the Arbitration Award presented by Government – as a victory and as vindication. To recap – the total award, including share value and interest, was a little over four hundred and fifty million dollars. Subtract the sixty-five million paid by G.O.B. in 2015 when the settlement was inked and signed, you’re left with about four hundred million owing, give or take a few million. In eight working days, government will have to pay about two hundred million dollars. In a year, another two hundred million plus about twenty-four million dollars in interest accrued over that year. At his press conference, Prime Minister Dean Barrow explained that paying two hundred million in a matter of days is really not going to be a problem.

Prime Minister Dean Barrow

“There is at all times an outstanding issue of T-bills or T-notes. The mechanics, the modalities, we believe can be sorted out in time for us to meet this ten working day deadline, and I’ll ask the FS afterwards if he wants to speak a little to that. But perhaps the most important part of your question is the interest rate at which we will do this borrowing, at which we will offer the government paper. That has not yet been decided, but it will certainly be at an interest rate that is lower than what was attached to the last issue of government paper that we did.”

Joseph Waight

Joseph Waight, Financial Secretary

“You may recall that in anticipation, knowing that this payment would have to be made, we went to Parliament and increased the issuance levels for both Treasury Notes and Treasury Bills, so we have the headroom, so we had the legal authority to step in right away and produce these securities, sell them to the Central Bank – the Central Bank will create for us an account for the proceeds, and we then convert that into U.S. dollars for the U.S. dollar portion and we make the payment. The Belize dollar portion we get instructions from the awardees as to how they wish that to be paid. The interest rate will be reflective of…depending on the term of the…it could be a single note, it could be a blend of the different maturities and as with notes, given the liquidity in the system, we’ll be able to roll them over as time goes on.”