And after making his statement on crime, the Prime Minister moved unto the heavy business of the day, which was the tabling of a motion to approve a US$25 million loan from the Government of Venezuela. As we've reported, it is a 25 year loan, on concessionary terms: an interest rate of liber, which presently is 3 to 4.5%, for 15 years, starting in June of 2008. The loan is to enable Belize to meet its debt service shortfall for this year. The Prime Minister explained.
Rt. Hon. Said Musa
"Madam Speaker Belize is currently experiencing strong pressures on its external reserves due to high external debt, debt service commitments, continuing high prices for imported petroleum products, and strong consumer demand for luxury imports, coupled with a gradual erosion of preferential prices of our sugar and banana exports.
Taken today these factors have absorbed the growth in foreign exchange earnings from tourism and from non-traditional exports resulting in a deficit in the current account of the balance of payment and in pressures on the official foreign reserves. It is the intention of government to set these funds aside solely to assist in the management of our external debts during the remainder of this fiscal year."
Hon. Patrick Faber, Collet (UDP)
"There are elements that are missing. Madam Speaker the Prime Minister has yet to take responsibility to admit that the reason why we are in this position, the reason why we have to move in this format, scrambling almost to meet our
payments, is because of mismanagement and because of corruption. Nowhere in his presentation Madam Speaker, when he mentioned all the causes of why we are in this situation, did we hear about that. We are saying that we are borrowing this money in order to assist with the restructuring of the debt then tell us exactly what monies we are paying down. In fact Madam Speaker it is not only a request that comes from us, the international financial community also told them because Madam Speaker, they were borrowing money all the time for restructuring until one day they started saying you are borrowing all this money for restructuring and the bill is not going down. That is why we are in the predicament of getting all these negative ratings from the international financial community."]
