Teachers and Public Officers’ Full Pay Could Be Restored Before Three Years

A year ago, the various unions were preparing to protest in the streets after negotiations between them and the government broke down and a ten percent pay cut for them became more evident.  At the time, the government indicated that for the economy to recover from its fragile state, the pay cut had to remain in place for three years.  But today, the Prime Minister told reporters that Belize’s economy has shown a more robust comeback than was anticipated, and because of that, the salary cut that teachers and public officers have been enduring might not last for the entire three years.

John Briceño

Prime Minister John Briceño

“Now the economy has been growing way faster than what the I.M.F. was predicting. They were saying that we were going to have growth of between two and three percent, then they moved it to six percent. And now it seems that we’re going to have growth of between twelve and fifteen percent for last year. And for this year, the present projections are at six point two percent growth rate. That’s phenomenal growth. The taxes have been performing better than what we expected, so we believe when we meet with the P.S.U. and the B.N.T.U. that we’ll be able to look at the salary cut and be able to see how we can start to go back to give back the amount that was cut. We know it’s for three years, but if we can do it tomorrow, I’d do it tomorrow, but we still have to look at the numbers. But we believe that we can do something for them. And we’re going to disclose as much as we can, the information that we can give them.”