And, changing gears now...
Tonight we're looking more closely at the boots that the Ministry of Defence purchases for the BDF.
The simple question is: are they paying more than the best available local price, and are they deliberately flying under the oversight threshold? Jules Vasquez looked for answers and just found more questions:
ALTAMA boots - they are military grade, and preferred by Belize's security forces for their quality and durability. This official website prices them at 214 US dollars each but that is the manufacturers suggested retail price - to which coupons can be applied.
While Amazon has the same boot for about one hundred US dollars less. Based on those figures local merchants tell us that, landed, the wholesale cost price is probably about $175 to $200 Belize dollars per boot.
Locally, one importer had been selling them to government for about $275 Belize dollars each, but reports say that - without a contract - government instead chose to buy hundreds of these boots at a higher price - as much as $125 to $150 more per boot.
The current CEO Francis Usher told us that the price the Ministry of Defence paid was in the ball park of 400 dollars. He pointed to the MSRP of 214 US dollars.
When you're ordering 1500 pairs as stated here for the Fiscal Year 2021/2022 - the difference in price between 275 and 400 dollars can amount to an added, above market price windfall of 600,000 thousand dollars for the supplier.
We know for sure they did not buy it from the only authorized dealer listed on the Altama site which is KSBJ Fashion - they said they did not get the contract. And importer Arun Hotchandani told us about his Tropicana Store, "we are the only authorized agents for Altama" - though we could not find the brand in the store today.
And, though the contract for the supply of 1,500 boots would be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars it's useful to note that the Contractor General said he never saw a contract for this. That tells us there was likely no contract and that the boots could have been paid for in those infamous - sub - 10,000 dollar disbursements - a way to avoid oversight or the need for approval of a contract. Whatever the case, the public purse paid more, hundreds of thousands more than the best available price.
The questions tonight are why did the Ministry of Defence bypass both the local agent and the contractor general - and why did they burden the public by paying an inflated price.
