Official statistics confirm cost of living is up
There is a mixed bag of some good and bad news in the country’s economic performance in the first two quarters of 2008. But first the positive indicators. Statistics released today by the Statistical Institute of Belize show that the private sector held its own and that gross domestic product rebounded after a slow start at the beginning of the year and grew overall by four percent primarily due to wholesale and retail trade and the manufacturing sectors. The fishing sector, according to S.I.B., showed growth in the second quarter after it recovered from the closure of the Nova Shrimp farm to become the third largest contributor to the growth of the economy behind agriculture, transport, and communication.
With respect to, trade Belize’s imports increased twenty-four point five percent or close to two hundred million dollars over the same period last year. The U.S. continues to be the largest supplier of goods and interestingly, Central America came in second because of the ongoing trade in the Commercial Free Zone.
But the bad news is in the tourism sector which showed a slump in arrivals since the beginning of the year. Electricity and water sectors fared no better and according to the S.I.B. release, there was a twenty point four drop in electric power generation due to lower rainfall at the Chalillo Dam.
But the worst news is in the Consumer Price Index which registered a staggering increase of six point nine percent in prices of goods and services when compared to prices in the same period last year. Consumers have been feeling the pinch and most notably, the increases were in food and beverages and the prices of daily staples such as flour, shot up by a whopping fifty-one point five percent. Rice increased twenty-one point three percent and chicken by thirteen point four percent. Not surprisingly with high prices for oil on the international market, locally the price of diesel, which was once the lowest, is now up by thirty-five percent and gasoline by seven point eight percent. P.U.P. Deputy Party Leader Mark Espat gave the opposition’s take on the statistics.
Mark Espat, P.U.P. Deputy Leader
“The implications are very clear, the challenge of this government is to actually lift Belizean out of poverty and to not let anymore Belizeans fall into poverty. Clearly if people have to spend more on their basic food items like flour and chicken and so on, then it means they are ,more likely to fall below the poverty line. I think these statistics show irrefutably that the paltry amount in the government’s budget to provide relief from surging food items just won’t cut it and I think the major concern that all of us should have is that right now we should be lifting people out of poverty and not just trying to prevent them from falling in. that is far more likely to happen with this level of increase in the cost of living. The Ministry of Tourism tells us that a full one-fifth of the economy is based on the hospitality and tourism sector. I know that that sector has shown year and year growth from 1998 right up to 2007 and so it is unprecedented in the last ten years for us to have even one quarter of decline and much less two quarters as we have now had. Clearly that is an industry that touches thousands of Belizean workers and families and so it requires special attention as does so many other aspects of the economy but tourism in particular.”
