A budget after elections sweep – No new taxes, a booming tourism industry, struggling agricultural exports, record unemployment and high cost of living

By Hugh O’Brien: For the fourth time since taking office, Prime Minister John Briceño is expected to rise on Friday morning at the National Assembly to introduce, per its usual short title, “A Bill for an Act to appropriate certain sums of money for the use of the Public Service for the financial year ending March 31, 2025.” It is expected that while PM Briceno will lament on the fall in exports of our major agricultural commodities namely citrus and bananas, he will laud record unemployment rate across the land. A booming tourism industry and an employment of over 15,000 individuals in the Call Center/Business Processing Overseas (BPO) sector will give the PM bragging rights, particularly since the Call Center support program was initiated in 2006 by the Musa government and the laws of the country were changed to have Call Centers qualify as Export Processing Zones to attract much needed investment.

A dampener in the economic performance of the country will be the significant drop in citrus and banana exports that occurred in 2023. However, PM Briceno will probably highlight that Belize’s food self sufficiency has reached new heights and that CARICOM applauded Belize for leading the region in this effort and achieving 80% of the food production targets set for 2025. Briceno will also report that banana, shrimp and citrus exports are all in various levels of rebound. In the case of bananas, exports for the first 2 months in 2024 are back to the 2021 foreign exchange income when banana exports for the year topped $90 million. Shrimp which saw a small boost in exports in 2023, is heading towards a much better 2024 while citrus production, processing and exports are expected to almost double.

No new taxes are expected in the 2024/2025 budget, but it is yet to be seen if the Briceno administration will provide some tax relief for Belizeans to help address the high inflation rate and particularly the high cost of food and basic living expenses.

The General Revenue and Appropriation Bill, commonly and informally called the Budget, is the primary instrument by which Belize functions – if there is no money to do anything, nothing gets done.

It is the responsibility and legal authority of the Minister of Finance, which every Prime Minister has been since Independence, to “prepare and lay before the House of Representatives in each financial year estimates of the revenues and expenditures of Belize for the next following financial year,” per Section 115 of the Constitution. Subsection 2 further provides that “The heads of expenditure contained in the estimates…shall be included in a Bill, to be known as an Appropriation Bill, providing for the issue from the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the sum necessary to meet that expenditure and the appropriation of those sums for the purposes specified therein.”

The Act contains as prescribed each of the Ministries of the Government and associated departments along with the estimated monies appropriated for each. The five major parts of the Budget are recurrent expenditure (monies spent every year by each Ministry, for instance on salaries); capital two expenditure (local capital programs which are funded from our resources); capital three expenditure (funded from external loan and grant resources); capital transfer and net lending; and amortization. The Ministry of Finance is typically the biggest spender, followed by the Ministries of Education, Health, Home Affairs, and National Defence and Border Security. Specific offices including the Judiciary, Auditor General, and Public Prosecutions and bodies such as the Elections and Boundaries Commission and Public Service Commission are directly funded. Also usually presented is an Official Charities Motion to fund organizations deemed worthy of providing public service.

After the first reading the Budget is debated at a later date, starting with a response from the Leader of the Opposition, after which other members weigh in. A vote is taken at the end of the debate which last year went on for three days, after which the Bill goes to the Senate for a marathon debate, although it cannot be voted down for good as it would simply go back to the House as a money bill. The Budget is thereafter enacted by the Governor-General’s assent on April 1.

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