The Prime Minister refused to comment on the new budget either during the session or after. But one man who did comment was Home Affairs Minister Ralph Fonseca. As a member of the ministerial public finance committee which is stripped now of former ministers Courtenay and Espat, Fonseca is definitely on a decided upswing in terms of his influence over matters of public finance. So today we asked him: what will be the new taxes in the budget?
Jules Vasquez,
Do you all have any idea at this point what direction the taxation is going? Is it going on sales tax, on business tax, on PAYE?
Ralph Fonseca, Minister of Home Affairs and Investment
"See the Prime Minister told you not to ask about taxes. What I can tell you is PAYE will not be touched. I can assure of that number 1. Number 2 is we will try and ensure the taxes do not affect the people who can afford it the least. So obviously you will try to stay away from the across the board taxes as much as possible. And if you do have to touch them, you try to touch only those that affect imports and not those that affect local production and that kind of thing. So that is what we are looking at and then of course the usual sin tax."
"I don't think you are going to see austerity Jules to the point of a recession. You are going to see austerity to the point of...we're used to growing now at like 5% or 6% and we take that for granted even with hurricanes and what not. Our real growth next year, what we are programming for, is somewhere around 3.5% so you are still going to have growth."
Jules Vasquez,
So in terms of the IMF recommendations, which were by all appearances austere, how closely or how far away will be playing it to that, knowing that Article 4 consultations are due in February? And we having asking them in October for help are obligated to do a song and dance, at least, for them.
Ralph Fonseca,
"Well you know I'm not an IMF fan."
Jules Vasquez,
You aren't indeed.
Ralph Fonseca,
"As a matter of fact they have some special names for me. But no we're not thinking about the IMF. The IMF has their own thing. They have their own job to do like I always say and its good to hear a third party opinion. We have our own program and our own program is a combination of things. One is to tighten up on a lot of these things that we've been talking about and we haven't been able to do it because the political environment has not been right. One of them which the Prime Minister mentioned today is putting an international company in the Customs. We wanted to do that a long time but politically it wasn't right. Now I think it's right, the private sector is ready for it. So that's a good thing that has come out of this whole thing because people realize that the Customs is the biggest leak. Now whether it's please most of the Customs guys are great and its just that there must be a clique in there that's doing their thing and none of our governments have been able to fix it."
As for the raise promised to public servants, Fonseca said it will be staged for later introduction along with the implementation of a meritocracy. Tomorrow the National Trade Union Congress of Belize will hold a press conference to present its views on the new budget.
