After a tumultuous month of May which witnessed the abrupt resignation of the Financial Secretary, the firing of Superbond Minister Mark Espat and the forced disclosure of secret government guarantee documents, the Prime Minister and his new point man on finance Joe Waight had to make quite the show of transparency when they went to Caribbean Development Bank meetings in Venezuela in the last week of May. Winning the confidence and support of the CDB was vital because that bank has promised US$25 million in policy based loans, money that was put in jeopardy when Fin Sec Barnett resigned and skeletons started streaming out of the executive closet like the night of the living dead.
So at the end of May transparency meant coming clean to the international community about all the secret guarantees that government had failed to disclose in the debt restructuring exercise which was led by Espat and Barnett. So according to our sources, government prepared a "come clean" document disclosing everything. 7NEWS has obtained a copy of just such a document from FreeBelize.org and it makes some interesting and some startling new disclosures. Here's what caught our eye.
Jules Vasquez Reporting,
The table of contingent external liabilities show that in terms of private sector guarantees, government has US$16 million guaranteed as a buy back for the Port of Belize. That guarantee confirms it as a government-guaranteed privatization. And of course there are still those two Intelco promissory notes that government is paying to the International Bank of Miami for its Intelco intercom system.
Also fully disclosed to the international community are those guarantees 7NEWS first told you about for Provident Bank and Trust limited for US$12.25 million - BZ$24.5 million. Interestingly a note says that government is disputing those figures but we don't know where they're disputing it because it's certainly not in the Supreme Court. But while they continue to paper dispute it - the tab is running and interest accruing.
And while those are the external guarantees of note, government's domestic guarantees to the private sector show an interesting new revelation - US$500,000 - a million Belize dollars - guaranteed for the Northern Fishermen Co-operative at the Belize Bank.
Even more alarming are government's total domestic liabilities - US$190 million, almost BZ$400 million, and it's gone up by almost BZ$100 million in the three months between the end of December of 06 and the end of March of 07. Much of that went into government's ballooning overdraft at the Central Bank which has gone up from US$44 million to US$73 million - an increase of BZ$60 million in three months. It's now at almost BZ$150 million, when the statutory limit is BZ$90 million.
It's of note that the additional $12 million loan from the Belize Bank to Universal which the Prime Minister secretly Signed unto on March 29 of this year, is not included under the guarantees. A note to the document simply says that government signed on as an interested party.
If you want to see the whole document you can visit FreeBelize.org.
