Lord Ashcroft reviews P.M.’s stimulus plan

Earlier in the newscast we reported on developments in the Belize Bank and NEWCO. And in the no holds barred interview Lord Ashcroft also had his thoughts on the Prime Minister’s stimulus plan. Here is what he had to say…

Lord Michael Ashcroft
“To put it in its simplest sense, a stimulus is meant to either keep the economy going, rather than having it contract. There are two ways in which that can be done: either by government spending more, especially on things like infrastructure to create jobs to keep the wagon moving and secondly, is tax cuts which is to encourage the consumers and others to spend more in order that businesses are able to stay in business producing goods and services for people to buy. The opposite of that is that people don’t have the money to spend, government either tries to increase taxes, which makes it worse and the government stops infrastructure projects, which then loses jobs and the combined effect is to drive the economy of the country down. It is regarded as the Keynesian theory. Belize basically has to fend a recession the old fashioned way, the brutal way. It has to stand in the face of the hurricane because there are no funds to be able to do a stimulus package, for example, the so-called stimulus package announced by the government was neither fish nor foul. It was a mixture of old loans, loans to be and dressed up a bit like an ugly woman with plenty of make up. I don’t mean that in a derogatory sense. So we can’t do that, we have budget deficits which, in a recession, you shouldn’t be taxing your people out of existence because you need to stimulate your economy. So I think Belize is going to be faced with a very difficult time over the next year or two.”

For more on the interview and his take on other burning issues including financial contributions from a foreign government and strategic voting, you can log on to Open Your Eyes on the Channel Five website www.channel5belize.com.