PM’s New Year Address: Economic Review of 2021

John Briceño

Prime Minister John Briceño today released his New Year’s Message to the country. Among the issues highlighted in his address was the state of the economy. The PM reviewed his administration’s first full year in office and although the year was met with some challenges, he says that things are changing for the better.

Prime Minister John Briceño

“This past year, the second year of a global pandemic, which upended our sense of normalcy, has been marked with challenges. And for our small and vulnerable country, we have been tested in unthinkable ways and yet in 2021, my administration’s first full year in office may well be the year we turn things around. In 2021, our people went back to work; evidence by the dramatic fall in unemployment to nine point two percent with over twenty-five thousand more Belizeans working than the year before. The Belizean economy rebounding producing goods and services worth an additional eighty-five million dollars compared to 2020. Even the usually conservative IMF revised Belize’s projected growth for 2021 from two percent to a rate of twelve point five percent a near miraculous comeback.”