PM Briceño Explains Amended Fiscal Incentives Act

A proposed amendment to the Fiscal Incentives Act was tabled in the House of Representatives by Prime Minister John Briceño during the last sitting.  The recommended changes seek to replace the definitive agreements that were previously entered into by the Government of Belize and developers of mega projects, such as the Port of Magical Belize. The incentive is offered for investments that exceed five hundred million Belize dollars.  According to P.M. Briceño, the piece of legislation that will now become the revised Fiscal Incentives Act will be universal in its scope.

 

Prime Minister John Briceño

“There is one law that would cover everybody, as opposed to having, you know, for instance we had the Stake Bank law.  Stake Bank has a definitive agreement which is almost the same as this one that the U.D.P. was presenting and then trying to make, I don’t know, I still can’t understand what is the issue with our government when it comes to the definitive agreement.  We did nothing, we did not accept it.  We said, you know, that it’s best that we try to come up with something different and we believe that this was the answer.”

 

Isani Cayetano

“Here’s a follow-up question.  Two hundred and fifty million U.S. dollars is the equivalent of a half a billion Belize dollars.  So the natural question is, do we have any project of that scale, of that magnitude, that’s being undertaken in Belize, or perhaps if two hundred and fifty million dollars seems a bit too high a threshold?”

 

Prime Minster John Briceño

“This is the idea because you only want to do it for these large scale investments that are needed.  When you look at the issue of a cruise port, any cruise port that is built in Belize is going to cost over two hundred and fifty million U.S. dollars and the big part of it is because of the dredging that has to be done. We have the Four Seasons, right now.  They are building the Four Seasons in Caye Chapel and that investment is going to be about four hundred million U.S. dollars they’ll be investing in there.  And it’s not only the hotel, but several very upscale homes that are being built for different people that have already purchased their pieces of land, their parcel of land to be able to develop.”