Members of Saint John’s Credit Union Limited no longer need to travel deep into the heart of Southside to do business at the Basra Street office in Belize City. In addition to its branches in Dangriga and Belmopan, the credit union today established a new office on the Philip Goldson Highway, sharing space with UNO […]
Ahead of Thursday’s Budget Debate in Belmopan, the government has put aside, for now, one of its revenue-collecting measures targeted to affect the agriculture industry. During his budget presentation on March ninth, Prime Minister Dean Barrow proposed to attach General Sales Tax at twelve and a half percent to agricultural services such as land preparation, […]
Earlier we spoke about one of the Budget’s revenue-collecting measures, the exemption of G.S.T. on agricultural services being lifted, being shelved for now. The rest of the billion-dollar budget will be debated starting on Thursday. A look through the book shows modest recoveries for most of the major ministries after a tough year financially and […]
They split not too long ago, but the three sugar cane farmers’ associations are uniting in common cause against the announcement of exemptions to General Sales Tax to be implemented against agricultural services such as land preparation, harvesting and crop dusting. The measure is intended to close a loophole favoring certain farmers, but the Belize […]
The Belize Agro-Productive Sector Group will meet with Prime Minister Dean Barrow and other top officials next Wednesday ahead of the Budget Debate. During the presentation on March ninth, the Prime Minister spoke of lifting of exemptions to General Sales Tax on land preparation for agriculture, harvesting, and crop dusting services as part of additional […]
On Wednesday evening, the Inter-American Development Bank Belize office hosted the economic principal specialist for Central America, Mexico, Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Doctor Jordi Prat presented to attendees at the Radisson Hotel on the topic of “Inclusive Growth: Opportunities and Challenges for Central America and the Dominican Republic.” He highlighted the region’s social and […]
During the budget presentation for the upcoming fiscal year, Prime Minister Barrow announced that a tax of twelve and a half percent will be added to the existing cost of data. The increase in the form of General Sales Tax takes effect on April first and comes at the expense of all internet users, with […]
While he stayed away from speaking on behalf of Speednet Communications, the parent company of Smart, Briceño says that the additional cost will be borne by consumers of data, potentially locking out a poorer class of citizens who won’t be able to afford the service. This, he says, flies in the face of efforts by […]
The debate for the 2018 Budget is set for next week Thursday and Friday. One of the key points will be how the government is managing the tax base for revenue in relation to its spending. Business Senator Mark Lizarraga, a watchdog for the business community, argues in advance of that debate that if the […]
According to Lizarraga, G.O.B. in 2017 had promised austerity measures to cut back on operational expenses. In the 2018 Budget, they’ve only been able to do so by two percent, as opposed to the proposed five percent. The Senator calls for the government to more seriously pursue being efficient in curtailing expenses and managing debt. […]
Prime Minister Dean Barrow also addressed lingering issues regarding practices on taxes which have been identified as harmful by the European Union’s Code of Conduct group. By the end of this year, these must be reviewed and updated to ensure Belize cannot be listed as a non-cooperative jurisdiction for tax purposes. Belize must comply, says […]
The long-awaited first and second reading of the General Revenue and Appropriation Bill dominated today’s proceedings at the House of Representatives. The budget for the 2018-2019 financial year is for one point one eight three billion dollars in revenue, which is slightly less than last year. The Government’s total spending comes up to slightly more […]
In the last few weeks, Financial Secretary Joseph Waight, in a memo to C.E.O.’s of government ministries, suggested that national debt had reached one hundred percent of GDP. The official figure is lower, but not by much. Belize is completing its first year of the re-structured Superbond. Interest payments on that astronomic figure are expected […]
Outside the House, the Prime Minister referred to the proposed budget as being a case of ‘steady as she goes.’ But in the case of the new taxes, did he seem to be going back on his announcement on Thursday that there would be no new taxes in the Budget? Barrow doesn’t seem to think […]
If the Prime Minister sounded somewhat lukewarm concerning the new Budget, Leader of the Opposition John Briceño is downright cold. Offering his first impressions ahead of the debate in two weeks time, he called it lifeless. And he added, playing on an old sobriquet of his opposite number, that it was no glitter and no […]
The Government of Belize’s acquisition of Belize Telemedia Limited was also a feature of the Budget speech. A figure of more than half a billion dollars was widely quoted, but the final figure of four hundred and forty-eight million dollars is all fully paid to Dunkeld and B.T.L. Employees Trust. It was broken down into […]
For those worried about imminent increases at the pump, the Prime Minister quickly said that lesser used fuel oils, including kerosene, are the products affected by the G.S.T. re-balance. But with the recent troubles with Petrocaribe shipments, P.M. Barrow is still uneasy about the fuel situation, though he is still willing to work with Venezuela. […]
Five members of Minister Rene Montero’s family, in 1998, acquired between them eighty-one acres of land in two pristine and remote locations. One was the Privassion Enclave in the Mountain Pine Ridge and the other on northern Ambergris Caye. They paid a total of twenty-four thousand, two hundred and thirty-six dollars. But after the properties […]
The office of the Prime Minister sought to reassure Belizeans that the government will be able to extricate itself from what the Financial Secretary Joseph Waight described as an impending financial crash due to high levels of debt and overspending. Waight wrote to the CEOs asking them not to look for money in their budgets […]
The prices of consumer goods went up by almost one percent in the month of January. That’s according to the Statistical Institute of Belize. The SIB released its quarterly figures today, including the Consumer Price Index which shows an increase of zero point nine percent in the cost of regularly purchased goods and services when […]
Opposition Leader John Briceño says he expects that there will be some unpleasant consequences for alleged Government misspending in the forthcoming budget. But as to the specific question of raising taxes, the P.U.P. leader says anything is possible. And in light of the apparent neglect of the social partners, most conspicuously the Belize Chamber of […]
The Government of Belize has insisted that it is not in debt for fuel shipments from Venezuela through Curacao as part of the Petrocaribe agreement. But a Mexican online media source quotes Venezuelan authorities as accusing G.O.B. of being bankrupt for not meeting those payments. It says there has been no indication that the government […]
Financial Secretary Joseph Waight sent a blistering communication to chief executive officers some days ago asking that their finance officers stop searching for additional funds as there is no money in the coffers. Waight warned that Government will “likely have to issue more T-notes to meet the early end of year payday next month. Our […]
The Government has also hit out at suggestions that it owes for previous shipments of diesel oil from Venezuela and that a tanker cannot be discharged because G.O.B. hasn’t paid its bill. A press statement, over the weekend, calls the delay ‘temporary’ and as a result of ‘unanticipated difficulties’ for the Venezuelan state-run company PDVSA. […]
Is government broke? So broke that they may have to resort to issuing treasury bills just to pay salaries at the end of the month? Recent correspondence to C.E.O.s purportedly from the Financial Secretary Joseph Waight pointedly asks that each government ministry stop searching through their coffers for available funding and sending requests to the […]
