Prime Minister says resources well allocated
The Prime Minister Said Musa defended the 83 point 3 million dollar new budget which he says, given the mess the government inherited from the U.D.P., is a combination of belt tightening and measures designed to spur investment and growth. He also addressed the issue of the 100 million dollar Loan from Taiwan which the Opposition says has yet to materialize.
Said Musa, Prime Minister
“I think that you have to look at it in terms of the programming of the budget. The allocation of resources is what is in basic terms at stake here. You have X number of dollars to spend in a budget three hundred and add million dollars, more or less and it’s a question of how you allocate those resources.
I listened to the Leader of the Opposition in the House today talking that everything that turned out to be good they have the credit for; everything that turned out to be bad such as the low prices: export earnings for sugar, citrus, bananas, P.U.P. is to blame for that. Obviously that is not the reality.
The fact of the matter is we had six months of U.D.P. and six months of P.U.P. last year. We took over in September. We found a very difficult situation, no doubt about it. We’ve had to restrain ourselves in terms of expenditure but we’re also able to do some innovative things to generate some income to get the economy moving again. It is not moving as fast as we want it to, clearly, but I don’t think people expected it to happen over night within six months.
But what we have been able to do and I think this is the overall point that I would like to make: for five years we’ve been getting deficit budgets totaling over a hundred and eighty million dollars in deficits. P.U.P. comes in and for the first time we are able to convert that into a recurrent surplus with an operational surplus. Now that doesn’t happen by accident. It had to be done by careful fiscal management.”
Q: “He (Dean Barrow) claims that was the result of the Business Tax.”
Said Musa
“The Business Tax was brought in late in the year that is true. But they projected in their budget how much they expected to get from the Business Tax. He’s saying they underestimated. I find that very difficult when they were in fact preparing a budget for an election, that they would underestimate how much they expect to collect from taxes knowing fully well that they wanted to present a rosy picture to the Belizean people. As Minister Fonseca said it just doesn’t wash.
The truth of the matter is that the economy had slowed down so much and they were not getting the funds from the Business Tax. We came in and we were able to stimulate interest, stimulate confidence and things started turning around. One of the things that people don’t realize, they ask why is it that we brought down the Business Tax rate for the gas stations, for instance, to .75 percent. The truth of the matter is under the Esquivel and U.D.P., not a cent, hardly any gas station was paying anything towards the Business Tax. They just were unable to do so and they refused to pay.”
Q: “What is the status of the hundred million dollars from Taiwan? Mr. Finnegan characterized it as a line of credit. Is there something more concrete to it?”
Said Musa
“It’s a very simple thing. I don’t know why they are trying to make a mystery of this thing. It’s a loan of a hundred million dollars at five percent interest, spread over twenty years repayment. It will be disbursed in 20 million dollars Belize a year. That’s very clear. I don’t think there should be any doubt about it. The first twenty million dollars will be spent in this upcoming budget.”
Today’s debate continued until late this evening at the House of Representatives.
