And one of the main issues on the table at the retreat was the ever rising gas prices. Diesel went up by 50 cents last week and tonight, regular will be increasing by 56 cents. And as usual, the PM explained why they can't lower the taxes on gas - because it will result in a huge drop in revenue for the government. And with Russia at war with Ukraine, that gas pain looks like it will only be increasing. So what's the PM's quick fix? Well, he said walking more often wouldn't be such a bad thing.
Hon. John Briceno, Prime Minister
"We Belizeans look at things differently. We go outside and we don't mind paying $5US for a burger but right here at Belize $3, they say the burger too expensive. Or with Uber, wonderful example. You take an Uber and you pay $16, $20 but right here the poor taxi man charges $6, $8 and we're screaming out blood. I know we're going through a very difficult time but the issue of fuel, we simply have no control. Up to 2020 when we got into government, the government was taxing about 48%, right now we're down to 37% and what we did right now is trying to hold down the diesel and I think we increased it only by 50 cents. It should have been a dollar, we tried to hold it down, but eventually it will have to go up, there's no running away from that as much as I wish we can do something about it. Remember fuel, we get approximately $150,000,000 a year from fuel. If we take off $1 from the tax we are writing off $30,000,000 and even with $1 people still say it is too high. Let's say we are to take off $2, we're looking at about $60,000,000 and we're giving the government employees their 10% raise, that's $60,000,000+. We're looking at $120,000,000 that we'll have to find. I understand that it's a lot of numbers, the point is we're trying our best to hold down the price as much as we possibly can but Russia isn't making it easy for us."
