Almost two months after the PUP decisively won a second consecutive term (in the March 12 general election), the new government announced that “the Fourteenth Session of the House of Representatives and the Fifteenth Session of the Senate of the National Assembly of Belize … in front of the Sir Edney Cain Building, Belmopan” is to be held on Friday, May 9. But, as the Amandala noted on Tuesday, the government made no mention of the budget for the fiscal year 2025/26. As far as we know, it’s unprecedented that more than a month after the fiscal year began (April 1) a government has not presented its performance report for the previous year and its proposal for the spending of the people’s money, up to March 31. 

It didn’t cause much of a ripple when the then main opposition (PUP) went to court and got a ruling from Chief Justice Kenneth Benjamin that the Barrow UDP government had spent hundreds of millions of dollars via supplementary appropriation bills without proper parliamentary approval. Back in 2015, the Barrow UDP government, which had lapsed in its handling of tens of millions of dollars from the Petro Caribe program, went to the House of Representatives and passed the Petro Caribe Loans Act to insulate itself from charges that it was in violation of the Finance and Audit (Reform) Act of 2005.

That’s a lot of money to spend without proper authorization, but there was no suggestion of perfidy, stealing of the people’s funds. The failure was procedural, and Belizeans, while they were concerned, weren’t interested in hanging the government for its failure to follow the precise letter of the law.

In November last year, when the 2020-2025 government (PUP) approved a Supplementary Appropriations Bill for $106 million, the UDP accused our leaders of poor budgetary planning. It is usual for such bills to be introduced throughout the fiscal year, but the PUP government of 202O-2025 leaned on that facility excessively. It might matter that when it took over the reins in November 2020 the PUP inherited a bankrupt country, a country in deep recession, and we were very much still in the grip of the Covid-19 pandemic. Those were extremely unstable times.

In 2021 Belize signed an agreement with The Nature Conservancy, the Blue Bond (officially the Blue Bond Loan Agreement and the Conservation Funding Agreement), a nature-for-debt swap which saw us putting to bed the so-called Super Bond, a millstone around our necks since the PUP 2003-2008 government. The Blue Bond reportedly allowed our country to shave off approximately $400 million in total debt-servicing requirements. Also, in 2023 Venezuela generously agreed to reduce our debt for petrol we received under the very generous Petro Caribe program, by nearly $300 million. That program allowed deferred payments for the fuel at an extremely concessionary one percent interest rate.

In 2020 we were facing default. In his budget presentation for 2024/25, PM Briceño said that when his administration took office “the debt was as high as 132 percent of GDP.” And then we were out of the woods. PM Briceño said in the 2024/25 budget speech: “… in just over 3 years, we have literally cut in half what the country owes, as a percentage of annual GDP.” The halving of the debt freed up cash at home, and made us viable, as a borrower from development banks and friendly wealthy nations, of funds to invest in projects that had gone dormant because of the pandemic, and projects the PUP had promised in its Plan Belize 2020-2025 manifesto.

So then, what’s the trouble about producing the estimates of revenues and expenditures for this fiscal year? The pandemic behind us, with tourism rebounding to pre-pandemic levels, with investment in small businesses at an all-time high, and with the IMF giving the “thumbs up” to our economy, Belize’s economic glass looked at least half full just a few months ago. But discerning Belizeans saw worrying signs, stormy weather ahead. With the Europeans still at war in Ukraine, and still destroying Gaza, there were no signs of a decrease in the high cost of living. In agriculture, the screw worm, which had been eradicated from Central America over two decades ago, resurged, threatening our growing livestock industry; and our number one agro-industry, sugarcane in the north, was hit by unfavorable weather and a fungal disease.

The government has claimed that the general election, coming a couple weeks before the end of the fiscal year, delayed the process. Usually, that is a time when government leaders and senior public officers are burning the midnight oil, but in March government leaders were focused on getting re-elected. It would have been presumptuous anyway for the government to prepare a budget, when no one knew for sure which party would be in control of the House on Independence Hill in Belmopan on March 13.

But the broad outline should have been in place, especially with the incumbent being the odds-on favorite to win. And some plan must have been in place, and a budget quite likely would have been presented already, if a big storm from the north wasn’t blowing across the globe, disrupting everything in its path. The times today are as unstable as any we have experienced before. Since taking office on January 20, new US president Donald Trump has been on a mission to cut the costs of the US government. Thousands of workers have been pared from the US government’s work force, and subsidies to humanitarian programs abroad have been slashed or cut entirely. The US is also on a mission to reduce its trade deficit. Decades-old trade agreements have been ditched, and tariffs on goods from almost every country on the globe have been increased, in some instances in excess of 30%.

The biggest casualty of the US cuts is the US$125M “Compact to Enhance Education, Lower Energy Costs” that Belize signed with the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) in 2024. With the world’s economy thrown into turmoil because of the tariff war initiated by the US, Belize has reason to fear a downturn in tourism, which accounts for 50% of our economy. There is the disappointing sugar season in the north. And now, there is the demand by rank-and-file government employees for an immediate pay raise, after government upped the salaries of the Cabinet Secretary and the government ministries’ CEOs.

At a recent press conference, Opposition leader Hon. Tracy Panton said that government functioning without a budget for more than 5 weeks is “telling and troubling and speaks to the blatant disregard this Administration has for the Belizean people …” She also said she knows why no budget has been presented in the House of Representatives. She said it “will reveal that harder times are looming”, due to a “shrinking economy”, “increased cost of living”, and “a need for serious belt tightening.”

With the troubles that have come upon us, especially the uncertainty in the world’s economy right now, the government might want to function without a budget. But government can’t keep operating without one. As best it can, the government must estimate what we will pay for the equipment and supplies the country must import to keep the engine of government running, and must face the reduced revenues we are likely to earn from tourism and sugar sales this year. As Leader of the Opposition, Panton said about the economy, we know it calls for “serious belt tightening.” Belizeans understand the times. Protect those of us on the margins, cut fat, and “vamos bien” with the budget for fiscal year 2025/26.