…And CitCo admits to cash-flow problems

At seven weeks in arrears the City Council owes B.W.C. two hundred and seventeen thousand dollars. Today it was revealed that CitCo also has five weeks of outstanding bills with Belize Maintenance Limited, which at seventy-three thousand per week adds another three hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars to its debts. When News Five tried to get an interview with Mayor Moya, we were told she was in a meeting. However, we did manage to speak to Director of Financial Services, Duane Davis, who held an impromptu question and answer session for the media. Davis spoke about the bounced cheque and told us that while CitCo is indeed experiencing cash flow problems, things should get better starting this month.

Duane Davis, Director of Financial Services, CitCo
“When I gave them the cheque we had already talked to the people who should have paid this money in, but that didn’t happen.”

Keith Swift
“Did you call Belize Waste Control and tell them they couldn’t cash the cheque?”

Duane Davis
“By the time I was on to them, they had already gone to the bank. The council do have a cash-flow problem, I will be very frank with you but as I said, this coming month we should be over that. This is now our peak season for revenue collection, going right up until May, so this month as should be over whatever problems we were facing. Like any business, there is a cycle and what happen to us, is the period June coming to about November, that’s our poor cycle, that is the period where we don’t collect much revenue, nobody pay property taxes, there is no liquor license to collect, no trade license etcetera. Starting with December going through to about May, that’s when we collect the revenues. We intend or intention is to try and plan because we know the poor season will come again. So it’s a matter of planning and making sure we will be able to ride that out. Some of the things, there are new revenue initiatives that the council has come up with in terms of riding out that bad period.”

Davis says in January alone they expect to collect over a million dollars in revenues from trade and liquor licenses. The financial services director went on to contend that when the U.D.P. administration took office, the B.W.C. was owed thirteen weeks of payment, which they had to pay off.

When we contacted Belize Waste Control this afternoon, we were told that no one from the City Council had informed them that they could try once again to cash the cheque.