Moody’s Investor Service increases Belize’s bond rating

With the new fiscal year quickly approaching and a sixty million dollar deficit that needs financing, GOB has received some good news of sorts and that is that Belize has received favourable bond ratings from an international rating agency. In a news release issued on Tuesday, Moody’s Investor Service upgraded government’s ratings from a status of Caa-one to B-three. The release explains that the upgrade reflects “improvement in debt metrics”, “improvement in governance” and “expectations that bilateral and multilateral financing will continue providing sufficient support to help mitigate the negative impact of the global crisis”. It also notes that Belize’s fiscal position and external debt maturity profile have improved and attributes this to proceeds from oil production, reduced interest obligations, generous bilateral grants and government’s fiscal restraint. But we’re not out of the woods as Moody’s projects that the current prices will affect Belize’s key industries including tourism, agriculture and oil which will create challenges to the fiscal and external accounts and warns that fiscal policies will need to remain very tight to limit the potential for liquidity problems.