Earlier on in the newscast we told you that the analysts at Standard and Poor's say Belize is in danger of a sovereign default because we cannot effectively re-profile our debt. Well, the UDP says it has the solution and today unveiled it in what is called its economic rescue plan. We found out what's inside.
Dean Barrow, United Democratic Party Leader
"As Belize prepares to forge a new way forward, the most daunting task facing us is to repair an economy in tatters. We need to stamp out corruption, make the tax system more equitable, reduce the cost of living, create jobs, and bring hope to our people."
And the UDP plans to do that through a program of normalizing the $2 billion debt and bringing the $170 million deficit under control through a number of measures beginning with debt restructuring.
Dean Barrow,
"The UDP will restructure the foreign debt in such a way as to provide easier repayment terms and significantly reduce the $225 million of our recurrent revenue that we must now pay annually for debt servicing. Together with debt restructuring, the UDP will achieve a degree of debt forgiveness to further relieve the strain of our debt burden. The UDP will also revisit the multilateral sources of concessionary country financing."
"The UDP will in addition to improving revenue collection, eliminate waste and implement a focused, targeted public sector investment program, so as to rein in the fiscal deficit that has hovered at around 8% of GDP under the PUP. Such a huge gap, as the PUP has now maintained, will always increase pressure to raise taxes, which a UDP government is determined not to do."
"The UDP will curb the PUP policy of discretionary tax exemptions to friends, family and ruling party insiders."
"The UDP will attack the spiraling cost of living by a judicious policy of sales tax exemption on a select number of basic items. The UDP is needless to say committed to maintaining at all costs the current official peg of BZ$2 to US$1, in other words no devaluation; absolutely no devaluation under the UDP."
That's a lot of 'we wills' and to bridge the gap between will can, the UDP will rely on that intangible that it claims the PUP does not have and that is credibility."
Dean Barrow,
"The UDP premises all its ideas for economic rescue, one all-important springboard: immediate implementation of the reform agenda, which will help generate the national consensus and goodwill necessary for the critical economic reconstruction and adjustment effort. What is clear that the restoration of confidence, the new energy, the vision for recovery, can only come from the UDP. We have passed this way before, and performed with skill, dexterity and humanism between 1984 and 1989, the lift-saving operation on a Belize that the PUP had left terminally ill and in the arms of the IMF. We pay a special tribute to our immediate past leader and ex-Prime Minister Dr. Manuel Esquivel."
Manuel Esquivel, Former Prime Minister
"The UDP has demonstrated historically in both the cases of 1993, as well as the case of 1994, that it has the will, it has the courage, and it has the determination to do what has to be done in order to keep the ship afloat."
Jules Vasquez,
Much has been said on your behalf about what your role would be in a new UDP government. Much has been said by the leader of your party saying that you would intrinsically involved but I know that you are not only a retiring individual but you are a retired individual so what role would you wish to play were the UDP to take office?
Manuel Esquivel,
"I have no wishes, that is entirely up to the party leader and the new government."
Jules Vasquez,
But you would serve as the party leader wished?
Manuel Esquivel,
"That is correct."
