Tonight, Floralia's founders are under fire from their competitors after a leaked waiver emerged from the Ministry of Finance dated January 2022. It reveals that the bus operator got a 75% waiver on import and excise duty for the importation of four 2022 buses. The waiver would fall under the class development concession, one that Floralia's owner Marvin Vanzie insists any business is entitled to apply for. He also noted that they got no exemption for environmental tax and GST.
But there's still controversy because of an interview Vanzie gave to 7 News earlier in the week in which he expressed his wish that his company would have received quote: "some special treatment" given the 1 million dollar plus investment they've made in the country's transport system.
And It's consequential because while Vanzie is right that anyone can apply for this exemption, Floralia did get it - even though he told us otherwise two nights ago.:
Marvin Vanzie, Co-Owner, Floralia
"I wish that we got exemptions, I wish that we got some kind of special treatment because of the large investment that is involved in this, it's not a 30,000 dollar bus like all the other buses that are on the road, it's a 380,000 dollar bus so I do wish, honestly I wish that we had those special privileges but we didn't, it's like crazy amount of money and I understood, I did lobby, I did ask, can we get some kind of ability to lower our prices because it's like such a large investment, it's something that Belize needs, but I was told by the Ministry of Finance that, nope, we can't because we're going to set a precedence and if you do it, then it's going to have to be done for all the other bus operators. And it hurt the pocket, it did change the entire business model, but it's understandable, it has to be something that's passed by law and it's functional for everybody, so no we did not, and I just buy spare parts, I paid 18,000 in spare parts and I know when that gets to the border, it's not going to get no special privilege, we're going to have to pay our duties like everybody else."
But don't think that Vanzie got his buses and parts in duty free. Experts we spoke to told us that the dollar value in exemptions for those busses adds up to around $72,000 dollars. A broker told us they still ended up paying about $270,000 dollars in duties and taxes on 4 busses.
