The Establishment of a Credit Report Bureau in Belize

Prime Minister John Briceño

The Government of Belize is working towards the establishment of a credit report system in Belize. A credit report is basically a statement that has information about your financial activity and current credit situation such as loan payment history and the status of your account. Prime Minister John Briceño introduced the Credit Reporting Bill 2022 to the House of Representatives on Monday. He explained what the act seeks to achieve with the establishment of a Credit Report Bureau.

Prime Minister John Briceño

“This is a straight forward bill Madam Speaker and colleagues. In effect, we are trying to set up a credit bureau. As you know the people that have access, or the ones that have assets are the ones that have easier access to credit and in many instances, especially our poorer folks because they do not have these big bank accounts, whenever they get credit they charge them a lot of interest because they don’t have. There is no reporting system where a business can log in and say, ok John Briceno is a good creditor, or Tracy, or anyone of us. This would allow a reporting system that banks and businesses can report to a credit bureau and so that if you go to courts and you want to take out a bed on credit, a poor person from southside, they would be able to check the bureau and see that this person has a clean credit history and if they have good credit they would give them a lower interest rate. So, in effect we are trying to make credit available, especially to the ones that are most in need of credit.”