At the top of the news, we brought you an overview of the prime minister's budget presentation. After the House meeting ended, we asked the Leader of the Opposition for his reaction but he said he used the time to catch up on some Z's. He explained that it was very tedious but that he plans to spice things up in the next budget reading by having the UDP prepare their own budget as sort of a rebuttal to the PM's one.
Hon. Shyne Barrow, Leader of the Opposition
"I fell asleep to be quite honest, I had to go and get coffee to stay awake - he really put me to sleep reading off the teleprompter. It's more of the same - gone variety budget presentations and I think it is lacking severely."
Reporter
"He is talking about lottery tax, but not really much else, in terms of increasing what the public would have to pay."
Hon. Shyne Barrow, Leader of the Opposition
"I believe that we need to focus on collecting taxes and I see that he mentioned that some of those taxes are beyond the statutory limit. However, they have come to the house with many amendments to the constitution and legislative proposals to remedy problems that we don't even have, so why not come to the house and pass a legislation to say that you know we are going to extend the statute of limitations and make provisions so that we can collect those taxes, because we certainly need that money, given the dire straits that we have been in. Again, I understand for a multi-millionaire like the prime minister and many of the wealthy ministers that sit on the government side - the high cost of living, high cost of fuel doesnt impact them one bit and they can boast about growth, but growing from a covid19 economy doesn't necessarily say much, because we are coming - when you are coming from a minus hundred, saying that you are at one is not much. If you can say in contrast to our best performing economic years that we are here, then I could consider that, but people are really suffering, people are doing bad and we need to find a way to get the resources that are necessary to deal with the invasion of Ukraine, the illegal invasion by the Russians and bring relief to the Belizean people."
