The day and a half long Intersessional Meeting of CARICOM Regional Heads of Government concluded in the Placencia peninsula today. It was a short, but comprehensive meeting of the region’s leaders with a focus on coming up with a concrete structure and timeline to dealing with the most critical issues facing the Caribbean Community. Certainly […]
The loss of correspondent banking relations has been called a potentially huge crisis for Belize, and it is already affecting to a major extent smaller countries in the region. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and one option put on the table at the session was the possible pooling of resources in all member countries […]
Prime Minister Barrow and a delegation of high-level financial experts have concluded a round of meetings in the U.S. with regulatory and federal agencies. Nothing concrete came out of those meetings in terms of new correspondent banking relationships or the mending of old ones. But what has come out, according to the PM, is an […]
The opening ceremony of the Twenty-Seventh Intersessional Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government of CARICOM is about to start in Placencia at the Placencia Hotel. Late arrivals by some heads of government have delayed the launch of the three-day summit. As far as we can tell, the Prime Ministers of Jamaica, St. Vincent […]
While Ysaguirre refrained from divulging specific outcomes from the meeting, respective heads of government will be briefed of a collective position that will be taken in the days ahead. The loss of correspondent banking at the moment is deemed more urgent within the Caribbean than climate change since it has the potential for serious consequences […]
During today’s finance meeting, the committee discussed a number of options, including the possibility of establishing a regional correspondent bank by pooling together resources. While that idea may serve as a long-term solution, the practicality of it is being called to question. Glen Ysaguirre, Governor, Central Bank of Belize “There is also other recommendations […]
Moody’s Investors Service has just concluded a visit to Belize; the correspondent banking issue was at the centre of discussions with major players. The report issued at the end of the visit is dated February second and entitled Government of Belize Loss of Correspondent Bank Services Compounds Existing Economic and Fiscal Challenge. According to the […]
Between 2012 and 2015, when just the word Petrocaribe was enough to inspire poetry, song and euphoric frenzy, Government’s coffers were said to be bulging with hundreds of millions. The closest we’ve gotten to an official figure is somewhere in the region of close to four hundred million dollars. That’s a whole lot of money. […]
According to Waight, a payment of fifty million dollars is due in a few weeks time. That’s cause for anxiety, but there’s another financial storm looming. When Prime Minister Dean Barrow settled his Belize Telemedia woes just before election for one hundred and sixty million dollars…that was only part payment! There’s an arbitration panel getting […]
With the loss of some existing correspondent bank relationships, the country is facing what Prime Minister Dean Barrow has called an existential threat and a potentially huge crisis. To stave off that threat, the PM headed off to Washington last week, accompanied by Financial Secretary Joseph Waight, Governor of the Central Bank Glen Ysaguirre and […]
The delegation then met with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, another regulatory body which regulates banks that are chartered by states and have not joined the Federal Reserve System. According to the PM the feedback from the FDIC was a little more in the way of affirmative action. Prime Minister Dean Barrow “We met […]
The delegation also met with the Secretary of the Treasury. PM Barrow says the message from that quarter was the same – that there is nothing wrong with the Belize jurisdiction. Secretary Jacob Lew, says Barrow, has promised to spread that word among banks which Belize will now be targeting. Prime Minister Dean Barrow […]
CIBC First Caribbean International Bank officially exited Belize today. All its branches across the country also closed and banking transactions are shutting down as of tonight to make way for a flawless transition. In August of 2015, the bank announced that it was selling its assets to Heritage Bank and pulling out of Belize. While […]
But according to CWU president Audrey Matura-Shepherd, the union did not authorize the signing of the MOA. In a text sent to News Five, Matura-Shepherd asserts that she was “shocked to find out about it and even more so how come the signing was kept to secret until one week later.” The CWU executive will […]
And from crime to the financial sector…Prime Minister Dean Barrow is away on an official visit to Washington where he is attending a series of high-level meetings with officials from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Federal Reserve, as well as the IMF and World Bank. Government is attempting to solve the issue of correspondent […]
Prime Minister Dean Barrow has called the loss of correspondent bank relationships an existential threat and a potentially huge crisis. And undoubtedly, if not resolved the implications are many and significant – from what would be an inability to purchase goods and services from the U.S. In a recent interview, Barrow indicated that he is […]
Even as the Prime Minister continues to arrange a round of intensive meetings and lobbying sessions in the international forum, he told News Five that it is important that it be understood that de-risking is not a result of any problem with our jurisdiction. Prime Minister Dean Barrow “The official line from the banks…Bank […]
The PM touched on a number of hot-buttoned issues this afternoon. The issue of the loss of U.S. correspondent banking relationships due to de-risking is poses as an existential threat to the economy, says the Prime Minister. Last year, the Bank of America severed ties with some local banks, disrupting wire transfers and other online […]
Barrow says that while we are not quite there yet, the potential impact on Belize is real and huge. That is what has forced G.O.B. to be galvanized into action with the hopes of finding a solution. Prime Minister Dean Barrow “It is potentially a crisis; in fact, I don’t want to overstate things, […]
The government announced today that it will be passing on to consumers some savings on diesel. And we say some because on December twenty-eighth, the price of diesel shot up by eighty-one cents per gallon and it is now going down forty-two cents. It means that there is a thirty-nine cents difference from where the […]
In his New Year’s Address, released on Wednesday, Prime Minister Barrow acknowledged that the landscape in 2016 will be different than that of 2015, and a significant feature of that change will surely be spending. At least where government expenditure is concerned, 2015 was a time of plenty because there were four elections, including the […]
Don’t go all melancholy just yet though. Government has successfully campaigned on massive infrastructure works, and Prime Minister Barrow says that for the most part, that will continue in 2016 and beyond. Prime Minister Dean Barrow “There is enough that we have set aside from the PetroCaribe days of plenty, to complete the countrywide […]
At midnight on Sunday, the pump prices of fuel spiked, thanks largely to G.O.B. increasing import duties on Premium, Regular and Diesel. That import duty increase, tacked on to an increase in acquisition costs, led to Regular fuel going up to a controlled price of eight dollars and fifty-two cents in the city. But even […]
At midnight on Sunday, officially, pump prices for diesel, regular and premium fuel increased – diesel by eighty-one cents a gallon, regular by ninety-seven cents a gallon and premium by seventy-two cents a gallon. The thing is…world oil prices continue to trend downwards, resulting in lower fuel costs worldwide…but not in Belize. So what’s the […]
The release from government states that acquisition costs are expected to decline significantly in the coming weeks, in line with declining world oil prices. Pump prices are, consequently, expected to stabilize – below nine dollars for premium, below eight dollars for regular and below six-fifty for diesel fuel. In a fuel aside, we note that […]
