At the top of the news, we showed you the Opposition Leader "Shyne" Barrow's response to Prime Minister Briceno's new Budget. You also saw the stand-off between Barrow, the Prime Minister, and the House Speaker over the hurtling of insults across the floor.
We take you back now to clips form the 7-hour debate, in which members of the ruling government defended the proposed public spending by talking either about successful programs the previous budget funded, or new programs this one will empower. Here are a few excerpts:
Hon. Francis Fonseca - Minister of Education, Culture, E-Governance, Science & Technology
"I will acknowledge of course that all over the country there are communities who are full engaged in this school feeding work, our government understands that it was contained in our education plan Belize Agenda that our country needs in 2022, our country needs a comprehensive national healthy start feeding program. So, I am absolutely excited about this initiative, I'm absolutely grateful to the prime minister and the foreign minister for including this as part of the package that they took to Taiwan, that will be part of the financing but we also, our government is also investing over 2 million in the national healthy start feeding program to get it started. Technology of course is central to education and the COVID pandemic have forced us all to fully appreciate that to understand that, so in a sense it has sped up our efforts to move Belize forward technologically and certain the education system to put in place the technological infrastructure that we need to facilitate education across our country, so that's a big issue for us as well, digital devices, WiFi expansion, expansion of internet."
Hon. Orlando Habet - Minister of Sustainable Development, Climate Change & Disaster Risk Management
"We also updated our national determined contributions that set ambitious targets for the climate change mitigation and adaptation, this includes emission reduction in the energy, transport and forestry sectors. Key projects that address shore line erosion, reduction and climate change adaptability of target coastal communities, the provision of electricity to target villages in rural Toledo and enabling a frame work to participate in future red plus carbon payment transactions and climate finance mechanisms."
Hon. Henry Charles Usher - Minister of Public Service
"Through commutative and collaborative and consultative effort, we have developed Plan Belize and we are excited to execute what was included in that plan but there was a major crisis and we had to address that first and we did that with a 5 part economic recovery plan. Number one, reduce current expenditure, this included everything from the goods and services procured by government to the utility bills, to the rentals of property. The goal was 20% and even though this was not achieved Madam Speaker, government has to continue to tangle it's fiscal belt. Number two, revenue enhancing measures this included a more aggressive approach to collect customs duties, GST, land tax, it included the closing of tax loopholes and even the creation of a tax recovery unit for the collection of outstanding tax arrears. Madam Speaker, the efforts worked, total tax revenue collected was over 150 million dollars more than what was projected and Madam Speaker the next step is tax reform, we must make our tax system more fair and more equitable."
Hon. Rodwell Ferguson- Minister of Youth, Sports & Transportation
"I believe it is high time that we find a way to improve our transportation system across this country. I might not be liked by many of the operators because when I took the ministry, I said that we are going to modernize the transportation system industry in this country and that I will make sure happens under my watch. So, two weeks ago I approached the national bank of this country and I said Mr. Manager, I am asking if there is anyway possible that you as a bank can assist these operators to improve the transportation industry in this country. The bank was very receptive and I can say today that the bus operators, I've talked to some of them already, that the bank will come out with an MOU to say they are going to assist the operators to make sure that they can buy better buses in country. I was able to do it for all the school buses in the south along with myself and Mr. Mike, Mr. Oscar and Mr. Zabaneh, we went to the bank and all those who have school buses were able to get a loan through national bank to be able to provide transportation for school children in this country. Thank you very much National Bank of Belize."
The debate resumes tomorrow.
