But, that probably won't happen and we may well have a default. That's why the creditor committee representing bondholders is characterising Belize as a "serial defaulter."
That's the way international news reports are writing up the story - making it so that, in a manner of speaking, "Belize name sink da road."
Coye said it's regrettable but inevitable if the government of Belize is to focus on what's truly important:
Christopher Coye, Minister of State, Ministry of Finance
"The serial defaulter certainly doesn't sound good. I've never been a serial defaulter, but now looking at where we are as a country obviously there has been multiple restructurings of the bond and looking at the debt profile of Belize its certainly not commendable to see that we had a billion dollars in superbond debt back in 2008. And we have over a billion dollars in superbond debt in 2021. All that sound to me is that we've been paying interest for the last 12-13 years. Interest that we don't get back. That's gone. And we still owe in fact 1.1 billion dollars because we capitalize the interest last year. We owe 1.1 billion dollars. The bond holders are investors in this country and we do look at them as investors in this country, but we still have to give priority or rank in order of priority and when we rank in order of priority Belize comes first, not the investors."
