?The Government will very shortly announce that it is undertaking what it will please it to call a debt re-profiling exercise? Ladies and gentlemen, no private sector gives you voluntary relief. What the Government is going to do is to confront these creditors with the fact that unless they agree to take less than they are owed, they run the risk of getting absolutely nothing at all because the Government will be forced to default.?

Barrow read from a document titled Government of Belize: Economic and Financial Update (July 2006), which he said Government will use to buttress the case it is taking to the international credit community.

The document starts with a grim prognosis for Belize. It opens by admitting to an economic slowdown and points out that the Government has taken steps to curtail spending and increase revenue.

It adds that still, ?Government is facing severe resource shortages: these will become critical from Q4 2006 [the fourth quarter of this year ? October to December] onward.?

High oil prices, declining export prices, increased cost of servicing debt have eroded national reserves, leaving us with dangerously low import cover of below one month?s worth of imports, the report also said. By international convention, the country should have at least three months? cover to give it enough security in the event of an economic shock, such as that which would be caused by a hurricane strike.

The report also concedes what has been widely reported: that the public debt burden has risen dramatically in recent years, but it attributes the rise to hurricane damage and refinancing of the debt.

Though new money has been sought from lenders like Venezuela, the IDB and the CDB, Government claims it still needs millions more to bridge the financing gap for 2006.

Re-profiling, said Barrow, will cause Belize to get another downgrade from the international Standard & Poors?this time to SD or selective default?making it impossible for Belize to get commercial credit for a long time to come.

?In June, S&P gave Belize the lowest possible ratings except for default,? said Barrow. ?We were at the absolute bottom of the barrel and the only thing left is default. They made the point that ?this was principally because of our inability to service our debt???

The S&P report had said that if Belize chooses to restructure its debt, its ratings would be downgraded to SD.

?As the Government undertakes this exercise, what are we as a country to do? We?re really caught between a rock and a hard place,? he further remarked.

Barrow calls it a crisis, and he says the PUP is to blame.

Apart from the public debt, the UDP press conference addressed four other current issues: the Social Security Board, the General Sales Tax (GST), and education.

1stdeputy party leader, Gaspar Vega, spoke of the GST, which he said was ?a reincarnation? of the UDP VAT, only carrying a different name.

?The PUP has fun in changing names, just to look busy,? he said. ?The Police Force renamed the Police Department; the CYDP became Youth for the Future; the Government Information Service became the Belize Information Service then the Press Office; Permanent Secretaries became CEO?s, and corruption under this administration is suddenly called mistakes.?

Vega said that the frequent changes in the tax system are ?disruptive? and wasteful. The costs include training new administrators, getting new guidebooks and reporting forms, new accounting systems, re-labeling of goods, and more.

He added that while the rate of the GST is lower than the VAT, it is applied to far more items and this would be especially hurtful to the poor. For the first time, light bills are being taxed, and this alone would net GOB millions more in taxes, he pointed out.

?People want to know if with these funds Government will improve health services and make education more available to everyone, or will they give loans to their cronies and use monies for the coming election campaign,? said Vega.

He claimed that when the UDP takes office, it would not abolish the GST but fix it.

Patrick Faber, the Opposition House member for the Collet division, spoke on education:

?We have identified that for far too long, the basis of education for our children has been put on a political merry-go-round and that is certainly not healthy for the survival of our very infant nation,? he said.

His main message was that the Ministry of Education needs to take a greater lead in ensuring that education in Belize is elevated to a higher level. He particularly stressed on performance at the elementary levels, pointing to poor national performances on the BJAT ? the Belize Junior Achievement Test for Standard III students and the PSE ? the Primary School Examination for primary school leavers.

He said that it?s time to end the bureaucratic dance and focus on implementing programs to improve the education system?a responsibility he feels should also be shared with churches and school administrations, the Ministry and parents, with the Ministry taking a more central role.

But the hardships being experienced in education, he pointed out, are directly tied to the financial hardships now being experienced in the wider community. For example, parents who can?t make down payments towards their child?s or children?s tuition stand the risk of not getting them a spot for the new school year. Higher taxes means less money in people?s pockets to pay for education, he explained.

The cash crunch, he said, is immediately tied to the financial mismanagement of the PUP and the availability of student loans curtailed because of the condition of the DFC.

Referring to one such case of alleged mismanagement, Hon. Barrow had previously pointed out that the Government of Belize must now put the applicable laws in motion to recover the monies that had been deposited in foreign accounts related to the Glenn Godfrey Group of companies, under the securitization program with the Social Security Board, to follow the money trail, find out whose accounts got credited and to have those funds returned to Belize.

Wilfred ?Sedi? Elrington, UDP Pickstock standard bearer, noted, ?The SSB inquiry was brought about because thousands and thousands of Belizeans were complaining about the misuse of funds from the Social Security Board. For the first time in this country, thousands went into the streets to protest in August 2004. The first time in the history of this country, the UDP organized a nationwide picketing of the Social Security offices? it was only in consequence of that concerted pressure being brought by workers; party members and students; people of all walks of life, people calling in on the radio, on the talk shows, that the Government moved,? Elrington commented.

Commenting on the termination of Narda Garcia, Elrington, an attorney, said that the firing of Mrs. Narda Garcia might be ?a very diabolical and devious plan? by the PUP to allow her to get a full five years? worth of salary without working for it. He argues that the alleged wrongdoing was done under an old contract and she was given a new contract under which he claims she has done no wrong.

It means that the burden would then be on the existing board of the SSB to prove that she was guilty of wrongdoing during the term of her second contract.

The line of the speakers at Tuesday?s press conference was that a UDP Government would fix things.

?What they will have great difficulty in doing, a new Government will be able to achieve with a minimum effort. So we, this morning, alert the nation as to what is taking place but furthermore, we call on the Government, in the context of all that has gone wrong, but particularly because we are now facing this issue of sovereign default, to sit with the Opposition and to work out a timetable for accelerated general elections,? said Hon. Barrow.