Faber Says Big Savings, But Cost of Fuel is Still High

While the opposition leader acknowledges the assistance that the Taiwanese government has provided over the years, he says that there is no immediate relief for Belizean motorists across the country.  Notwithstanding G.O.B.’s ability to save millions of dollars by staying its payments to the Export/Import Bank and Mega International Commercial Bank, it has been unable to reduce the cost of fuel.  It’s a contrast that Patrick Faber was able to make in the House of Representatives.

Patrick Faber

Patrick Faber, Leader of the Opposition

“Let me place on record our gratitude to the government and people of Taiwan for their very generous offer to stay these principal payments for two and a half years and in one instance, if I remember correctly, Prime Minister, for three years.  And using the prime minister’s own description, Madam Speaker, we would have been able to free up, so to speak, some seventy million dollars over the next two and a half to three years, in terms of the principal payments to these ten loans.  But in the same breath, Madam Speaker, that we are doing this, we received an announcement that for the very first time in the history of this country I’d think, that gas prices have gone over twelve dollars.  So if it is we are getting this kind of reprieve, we are getting reprieve from these ten loans from Taiwan, if we are getting reprieve from the Super Bond, why is it that it cannot translate into some relief for the Belizean people.  This prime minister has gone on the record, Madam Speaker, to say that these gas prices have gone out of hand and should not be where it is when he was opposition leader, now with the kind of developments that he is asking us to support now, I would wish that he would give us some good news today in terms of the gas prices and say immediately, tomorrow, these gas prices will go down.”