Budget presented to the House

The theme was “Belize on Rebound” as Prime Minister Said Musa presented the national budget for fiscal year 2000-2001 today in the House of Representatives. While the debate will not take place until the 17th, Musa took the opportunity to give his administration a glowing report card. He pointed to robust economic growth in the past year of 6.4%. This growth was fueled by strong production in citrus; a massive increase in farmed shrimp exports and heightened activity in the construction sector. At the same time, the Prime Minister reported that unemployment had dropped from 14.3% to 12.8% and that overall consumer prices had actually fallen by an average of 1.2%. Looking forward to the new financial year, Musa laid out a budget of government expenditure totaling just over 461 million dollars. For the second year in a row he projected a recurrent surplus and overall domestic operational surplus. Foreign funded capital three projects of 75 million dollars will be funded by 21.7 million in grants and 53.3 in loans. On the revenue side the Prime Minister says that despite the cries of gloom and doom, the sales tax met its target and consumers could look forward to even lower prices in the new year.

Prime Minster, Said Musa

“The Sales Tax met its target, and in fact was right on target, so we don’t have a problem with meeting our revenue commitment under the Sales Tax. It was not of course as big as you would expect under VAT, after all you’re dealing with 8% as compared to 15%, but yes we made the 60 million dollars, projected under Sales Tax.”

Karla Heusner, Reporting

“You said that you’re gonna be cutting import duties on certain items. Can you go into that a little bit and what you’re hoping to achieve with that?”

Said Musa

“We are reducing custom duties by 5% on 1,030 items, mainly foods stuffs, processed foods, household goods and supplies, a wide array of goods as well as clothing, wearing apparel and this sort of thing.”