2022-2023 Budget to “touch lives in a positive way”, Says PM Briceño

John Briceño

The new budget targets a primary surplus of fourteen million dollars; some point thirty-five percent of G.D.P. The overall deficit is projected at ninety-eight million dollars or two point five percent of the G.D.P. The Briceño Administration proposes to retire ninety-seven million dollars in public debt in the year 2022, a projected increase of over ten million dollars when compared to 2021. Aside from the mathematics and numbers, PM Briceño says, the budget will touch lives in a positive way.

Prime Minister John Briceño

“Outside these academic numbers, which must be recited for consistency, I punctuate with just a few examples, what this budget does for all Belizeans. One, it employs fifteen thousand public officers and teachers, who collectively provide thirty five point one million work hours for public service during the budget work period. Two, the budget underwrites national sovereignty and citizen security, through the roles of the Belize Defense Force, the Belize Police Department and the Coast Guard. Three, the budget funds the judiciary, thereby providing the mechanisms for law and order of our country. Four, the budget pays for a hundred and eighty one government schools, contributes to another three hundred and eighty one grant aided schools, supports some level of direct support scholarship funding for four thousand students at the tertiary level, and effectively bank rolls the national education system from kinder to UB for hundred and two thousand six hundred and seventy one students. This budget will provide an additional two hundred million for youth and sporting programs. Five, our national referral hospital, regional hospitals and clinical, and the entire public health system is subsidized by this budget. Six, The budget funds the national infrastructure system, maintaining five hundred and twenty seven miles of paved roads, two thousand two hundred and ninety four miles of gravel surface roads, three hundred bridges, not to mention the entirety of new infrastructure projects.”