John Briceño says budget is a chokehold on Belizeans

John Briceno

While the Barrow Administration presented its third annual budget before the National Assembly, Belizeans continue to prepare for inevitable tax increases in what will be an overall difficult financial year ahead.  According to the Leader of the Opposition, John Briceño, the VAT man is back. In speaking with News Five, Briceño gave his rapid response to the 2010 – 2011 budget.

John Briceño, Opposition Leader, P.U.P.

“The first one is that the dreaded VAT is back.  The prime minister now is increasing GST by two and a half percent so when you combine that that’s now at twelve and a half percent and you add environmental tax we are at fourteen and a half percent.  Half a percent less on the fifteen percent that Mr. Barrow and Mr. Esquivel during term of office had.  Also the prime minister at the same time is saying that he’s going to give some form of tax release and reduce some taxes.  Relief to about ten million dollars but when you look at the numbers in the budget, the new taxes that he’s putting in place this new financial year he expects to collect a hundred and nine million dollars more in new taxes.  How can you help and economy that is in a nosedive by taxing them more? You need to find a way how to stimulate the economy and certainly what the prime minister has done today will not stimulate the economy. It’s going to continue to put a chokehold on the Belizean people and on the private sector. The other thing that comes to mind is that here was the prime minister always talking about his stimulus package. Remember the two [hundred] million dollar stimulus package and when we look at his budget we noted that his capital expenditure was cut short by over forty million dollars this financial year.  So obviously there was no stimulus package that he was talking about. He speaks about Kenzian Economics but yet when he is actually writing out the checks he behaves more like Freedman where he’s constricting the money that government has to circulate in the economy.”

According to Briceño, the past financial year has already seen a sharp decrease in the number of EPZs in operation and additional taxes will hurt more than help the current state of the economy. Click here for the full budget presentation for 2010.