Now, BTL's position as a licensee of the Microsoft 365 package was a deliberate enterprise move by the company back in 2018.
It acquired the license and training to distribute the software to government as a sort of partnership between the state and state owned telecoms provider.
Faber explained the rationale at the time:
Hon. Patrick Faber, Leader of the Opposition
"It was something that was supposed to have been done for future revenues for BTL and to keep the government and BTL in that relationship. It was never intended to be put out to tender for competition purposes like that and the reason for that is obvious, to keep a steady revenue flow into BTL, why? because that is in the best interest of the Belizean people."
"So when BTL prospers, everybody in this nation prospers and so you can't fault the government for making an obvious choice to go to BTL and that was what was done under the UDP administration and now in a most naked way of trying to make arrangements to benefit a few, mainly his family. We are also concern that this kind of gutting of BTL can only further put detriment to the interest of the Belizean people and might ask me how. Well, Social Security for instance, owns 34% of the shares of BTL and if you put a dollar figure to that investment comes out to some $85.4 million dollars of the workers money of this country."
