Poll Shows Steady Erosion of Economic Confidence

The high cost of living continues to be a major concern for Belizeans, chipping away at their economic confidence. While the findings show that Belizeans are doing better year after year, the rising prices and cost of living are really hitting their wallets hard.

 

Trygve Olson, Viking Strategies

“Declining economic confidence.  So the cost of living, inflation and economic inequality is a significant issue for many Belizeans.  What is unique, though, is in all the times that we have done surveys here in Belize, people are better off, actually feel better off about their ability to provide basics for their families, pay the electric bill, food, clothes than they have at any other point that we’ve been doing surveys.  But what’s really taking a toll on Belizeans, and this won’t surprise you as Belizeans, is rising prices and cost of living.  While people feel like they’re doing better, they also don’t feel like it’s keeping up. As somebody who’s worked on a lot of campaigns around the world, I would say if you had a president who ran just on a popular vote where party is less important, anybody could run, this is a country where you have a third of the population, they might consider somebody who’s outside of the two parties, if it were the right candidate.  That is only going to grow.  There eventually will be an election where either those voters will stay home en masse or they rise up and sort of go with it and it’s an interesting dynamic for the two parties because at some point, if voters are demanding it, the question will be, you know, they’re still sort of tied to that structure as it was.  Which party sort of evolves to that new reality and starts to represent them will be the party, at some point, it may not be this election maybe the next, but it’s going to have some tremendous success with a very different coalition than has previously been winning coalitions.”