And with the fiscal year coming to an end, the Cabinet also took a look at next year's budget. The PM said some of his colleagues were getting a little in over their heads with the budget they would like to see and he had to temper some of the eagerness. He explained what part of Plan Belize the next budget will focus on.
Hon. John Briceno, Prime Minister
"The IMF is probably the biggest cynic, bigger than Jules, was saying that it was impossible what we were going to do, in one year we pretty much turned things around and even the team leader, he said he has never seen something like this done before in any country in the world but at the same time we're not out of the woods and this is what I have to remind our colleague when we discuss the budget. We're getting to 2019 levels but in 2019 we were in a recession. So we're still in a hole trying to get out so the discussion gives me a good chance to segue into the budget. We had a long discussion about the budget. When we look at all the capital 2, capital 3 spending they wanted to do was over $400,000,000 and I said guys I know you[re excited, you want to implement Plan Belize but we don't have it, we have to be fiscally prudent in what we spend and that is what when we decided that we have to ensure that the budget will be looking now at the social aspects of governance. We have to look at adequation, the food-grocery program that we do, housing, education, these steps that have a direct impact on the lives of people and so we had that long discussion and we manage to tweak it down somewhat but without losing sight of what we need to do. We also agreed to increase the budget for youths, sports, increase it right now, cap it a $2 million and come up with a gambling tax that way the taxes from that can be aligned to be able to do social programs and also try to come up with more sports programs and more programs for young people."
