Used to be that you could rely on the accuracy of government's money figures about as much as an eighty year old could expect to see the tooth fairy. But sure enough, a government that had been decidedly dodgy about its statistics in the past, is now over-run by number gurus - turning out endless streams of figures, projections, and forecasts, all blessed by the IMF. And the reason why government has had to come clean is because of debt re-profiling. Instead of painting a false picture of prosperity as it did in the past, it has had to get real, and admit that things are bad, in fact far worse than they were ever claimed to be.
And that's created a fascinating study in reverse transparency, where the truth is finally publicly revealed, but long after we in the media can protest. So we've been looking at government's new numbers, and comparing to the told, and we've found a long trail of obfuscation, knowing misrepresentation, errors large and irreconcilable, and to some extent, event shameful. Here are just a few.
Jules Vasquez Reporting,
In his 2004 Budget Speech, Finance Minister Ralph Fonseca said the overall fiscal deficit for 2003 was 2.14%. A 2.14% overall deficit, well within our target of staying below 3% of GDP. Well new figures released by the Central Bank and posted on its website, show Fonseca was way, way, way off. The revised key indicators released three weeks ago, show that deficit at 10.6% of GDP - more than four times what Fonseca said it was! And that's no small bookkeeping error, that's a $160 million difference! And that kind wasn't just a one-off error; statistical misrepresentation was serial behavior in the Ministry of Finance.
In 2005, the Prime Minister returned as the Minister of Finance and though
embattled at the time, again misstated the deficit, though not quite as grandly as had Fonseca. He said it was 4.7%, an overall fiscal deficit not greater than $98.6 million or 4.7% of GDP. Well the revised indicatorsshow it at 6.4% of GDP - an error in this case of $20 million.
Prime Minister Musa was also way off on the reserves. He said that at the end of December, official international reserves stood at $130.9 million, equivalent to 1.7 months of imports. The revised figures show that he was off by $50 million; reserves were US$39.8 million, BZ$80 million, just one month of imports.
The debt was also misstated. In 2004, Fonseca called it at US$545.5 million. Public sector external debt of US$674.4 million of which central government's share is US$545.5 million or 56% of GDP Government's own revised estimates put it at US$1 billion, twice what Fonseca said it was - a full billion Belize dollars more!
And one year later, the Prime Minister was more realistic but still significantly off when he called it at US$968.8 million. The public sector's total disbursed outstanding external debt as of November 31, 2004 stood at US$ 968.8 million. The revised figure shows it at US$1,057 billion, just about a hundred million U.S. dollars more than what was claimed. Material and monstrous public misrepresentations that would continue until 2006 when Belize was facing the specter of a sovereign default.
The revised figures also show a massive recurrent deficit in 2003, when the Finance Minister Fonseca reported a recurrent surplus of $63.1 million, the revised figures show a deficit of $120 million. All the revised statistics are on the Central Bank's website.
