P.M. takes credit for reduction in fuel prices

Last Wednesday Belizeans woke up to the good news that Barack Obama has been elected president of the United States… the excitement of that historic appointment multiplied when on the same day news came of the drastic drop in gas prices. The conversion of the two events apparently caused some people to think they were related. Today the P.M. said not so.

Prime Minister Dean Barrow
“I will yield to no man in my praise for Barack Obama, but contrary to what some callers to the talk shows have been saying, these decreases have nothing to do with president elect Obama, and everything to do with the fall in acquisition prices number one, but number two and perhaps more importantly, with the policies of the current administration. The revenue foregone by the government over the period of months leading to the final position amounted to some thirty-five million dollars. Notwithstanding that, this government was determined to keep its compact with the people of this country and to ensure that we would ultimately produce for them lower fuel prices at the pump. The last time fuel prices were at this mark, this seven dollars on average per gallon, was in 2003 and at that time the world prices for fuel were at thirty-five dollars per barrel. It is almost double that now and yet this government is able to replicate that seven dollars per gallon. When it was last at seven dollars, fifty-seven percent of the price per gallon that you paid at the pump was attributable to the taxes collected by the last government. In that year, 2003, the government collected more than ninety-three point two million dollars in total tax on fuel. At today’s price of seven dollars, only twenty-one percent of that price is attributable to taxes.”

Among the policies that Barrow referred to is the systematic lowering of the revenue replacement duty on fuel.