The senate usually meets after every house meeting - but they skipped the last one - and met today to deal with the business of two house meetings.
That brought two related loan motions for debate. They're both from the IDB and promise to bring development to urban areas and to the health system. The Sustainable and Inclusive Urban Development Program motion is for ten million US dollars, while the Improving Efficiency, Quality, and Access in Belize's Health System is for fourteen million US dollars.
Altogether with the previous loan motions brought to the National Assembly in the last three and a half years, it amounts to 1.7 billion Belize dollars. This was pointed out by UDP Senator, Michael Peyrefitte, who rose to criticize the motions.
Michael Peyrefitte, UDP Senator
"We keep borrowing and borrowing and borrowing. We keep hearing the Minister of Finance say we're doing so well and the economy is expanding, not you Minister of State, Minister of Finance. The economy is expanding at such an alarming rate but we have to borrow approximately 50 million Belize dollars to do essential services for what I see you're saying you want to do on paper, I really, for the life of me, I know Senator Herrera, I don't want to hear that this is free money, practically free money, a loan is a loan. And we're up to 1.7 billion dollars in under four years, Madam President. We have come to this National Assembly and borrowed approximately 1.7 billion dollars, with a B, in four years, with nothing to show for it."
"And then when you look at the details, for example the one with the healthcare delivery you're talking about consultancies, each of these projects have line items where consultancies are more than a million US. If you look at the one for the sustainable urban development project administration management and audit, a million US, what is that? And you look at the execution units for these projects, they are the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Health, the people who will be executing these things already work for the government."
And the Minister of State in the Ministry of Finance rebutted Peyrefitte as he gave background information on the need for the loan motion and why it wasn't something they could have looked into earlier in their term.
Chris Coye, Minister of State, Ministry of Finance
"In that initial period of time we had to address those immediate challenges, but over the past couple years we've been able to look more medium term and long term, how do we address the challenges that we as a country face, we as a society face. Health, education, crime all of these are topical issues that we either have been discussing or will discuss today. These are areas that you don't wake one morning and say we're going to do this and we're going to do that, you have to understand why we have these challenges and how we are going to address these challenges. And that's why we value data, we value statistics."
"Items that for example have been identified are the challenges that we see in non-communicable diseases, heart disease, diabetes, stroke, those are some of the leading causes of death in Belize, those are areas that we can address but if we don't understand the problems we're facing, then we're either sticking our head in the sand or like headless chickens. So that's where we need to look at where the data is, gain the support of these multilaterals to do the analysis then target in an efficient and cost effective way the use of scarce resources to address these challenges and that is what these loan motions are about."
And the Minister of State in the Ministry of Finance rebutted Peyrefitte as he gave background information on the need for the loan motion and why it wasn't something they could have looked into earlier in their term.
