Last night, we brought you extensive coverage of yesterday's Senate Meeting in which Foreign Affairs Minister Eamon Courtenay had a sparring match with his colleague, UDP Senator Michael Peyrefitte. During yesterday's Senate Meeting, Peyrefitte also disagreed with the other Senator/Minister, Chris Coye, the Finance Minister of State, over a motion to pay for a little under 2.3 million dollars in shares to the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the International Finance Cooperation.
Both institutions are part of the World Banks Group. As a member country, Belize is required to subscribe to several shares in both institutions.
Those shares have a collective value of a little less than 2.289 million dollars, and since the proposed sum would have come out of public coffers, the government went to the House to seek parliamentary approval for it to be paid to the World Bank group.
Here is that moment from yesterday's Senate Meeting when the motion came up for debate:
Eamon Courtenay - Leader of Government Business
"Therefore, be it resolved that is Honorable House, being satisfied that the above-mentioned additional capital subscriptions will be beneficial to the interests of Belize in achieving better development outcomes, authorizes the Minister of Finance to sign the instruments of subscription and all other related documents, and make payments before the indicated deadlines to give effect to both the Bank and IFC Capital subscriptions."
Michael Peyrefitte - UDP Senator
"World Bank, one of the biggest organizations in the world, which can only be led by an American, as the IMF, it seems, can only be led by a European - they are going broke. And so, Belize has to help to bail out the World Bank. Why are we rushing to bail them out? We supposedly, according to this motion, owe them 2018. I am not aware that anybody is running us down. We won't pay them anything, one of the most 'worthless' organizations you can find, who have never done anything to benefit this country in any real way. They give you a loan for twenty-five million [dollars], and fifteen million is for consultants that they have to hire, and we are bailing them out. This is what this motion is, Madam President. I don't know. We should tell them that we don't have a law to pay them. Prime Minister [Briceno] should say, 'I have no law which authorizes me to pay you.' It says here there is no specific provision in the International Financial Organizations Act to authorize the minister of finance to pay these shares. A couple million, we can use that, Minister. Can't we use a couple of million? The amount that we have borrowed from the World Bank can't they write off two million dollars?"
Chris Coye - PUP Senator/Finance Minister of State
"Respectfully, I would like to say, Senator, I know that you know better. I'm not here to speak in favor of the World Bank. The World Bank and its figures can speak for themselves. Their bonds are AAA-rated. It's not a question of a bailout. It's a question of a decision that was made, a policy decision made four years ago, or thereabouts, to increase the capital so that the bank can leverage that capital far more to reach its member countries and support their development priorities. So, for example, the World Bank where has paid in capital of roughly $26 billion. It actually has loans out there of over $600 billion. So by increasing capital, it's able to leverage up more, so it can lend more to its members. The World Bank, actually among the multilateral development banks, is the cheapest lender of all of them. Unfortunately, under the past administration, I don't know if they were paying attention, but they were going to the most expensive one."
During his response, Christopher Coye pointed out that the World Bank had loaned Belize 23 million dollars for infrastructure projects. Still, when the COVID pandemic hit, they agreed to allow the former government to deploy that money for social assistance. Also, the World Bank has loaned Belize another 50 million dollars in support of the country's agricultural sector and improving agricultural productivity.
