Tuesday, November 1, 2011

BELIZE ECONOMIC STATUS. COULD BE SELF SUFFICIENT, WITHOUT OUR GOVERNMENT DEBTS.

WITHOUT OUR DEBT, BELIZE WOULD BE ECONOMICALLY SELF SUFFICIENT. ( self sustainable ) WITH THE DEBT WE ARE SLAVES.

The IMF are reporting our Belize GDP is 2.5 billion. Our Debt is totalled at $1.47 billion in US currency. The Belize currency is pegged to the USA currency at an official ratio of $2 Bz to $1 USA. In the real world, you cannot buy USA currency from the Government, they need and use it all. However local banks will sell US currency to the private sector for $2.28 Bz for $1 usa. I´m not sure how to figure DEBT to GDP as a ratio, but it might be 170% of GDP? Some say around 90%? Either way it is unsustainable with an economy based on tourism and raw commodity product exports.

The IMF says we need bigger foreign reserves. Locals have been saying the same thing for DECADES. We just cannot do it, on a set of government policies based on borrowing money abroad from our childrens and grandchildrens futures, to pay for infra-structure needed to develop in the present. We probably need about $20 billion in foreign reserves at our current GDP and population size, which is 300,000.
Belize: Selected Economic Indicators

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2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012



(Annual percentage change, unless otherwise indicated)

National income and prices


GDP at constant prices
1.2 3.8 0.0 2.7 2.5 2.8

Nominal GDP (US$ millions)
1,277 1,359 1,349 1,401 1,474 1,552

Gross domestic investment 1/ 2/
17 27 22 18 19 19

Gross national savings 1/
12.9 17.7 15.7 15.0 15.9 14.6

Consumer prices (end of period)
4.1 4.4 -0.4 0.0 4.2 2.5

Real effective exchange rate (July for 2011)
-4.9 -0.6 4.5 -3.1 -5.6 …


Money and credit


Credit to the private sector
13.9 11.6 4.8 -3.6 0.3 1.5

Money and quasi-money (M2)
15.0 14.0 5.8 -1.8 4.2 5.0


(In percent of GDP, unless otherwise indicated)

Central government 3/


Revenue and grants
28.2 28.7 27.0 27.4 28.6 27.4

Current expenditure
23.2 23.4 24.5 24.0 24.9 24.6

Capital expenditure and net lending
5.7 4.9 3.7 4.5 5.4 5.4

Primary balance
3.8 4.2 2.4 1.9 2.2 1.8

Overall balance
-0.7 0.4 -1.2 -1.5 -1.6 -2.5


External sector


External current account 4/
-4.1 -10.7 -6.2 -3.0 -3.1 -4.4

Overall balance of payments (US$ millions)
22.9 57.9 47.3 4.6 3.8 16.1

Public and publicly guaranteed debt
86.3 79.7 82.1 83.3 80.4 78.1

Domestic debt
8.2 7.4 7.1 11.9 12.1 11.5

External debt
78.1 72.3 75.0 71.4 68.3 66.6


Gross international reserves (US$ millions) 5/
108.5 166.4 213.7 218.0 221.8 235.2

In months of imports
1.6 2.1 3.3 3.2 2.9 2.9


Sources: Belize authorities; and IMF staff estimates and projections in 2011.
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The ONLY growth prospects for Belize are to EXPORT to earn foreign exchange, and the most easily quickly reached target is agro-processing and export processed food, to foreign countries to earn foreign exchange. There is also room for local light manufacturing niche products, like surveillance drones, light military hardware, certain types of hand made clothing requiring unique expertise, like sweater jackets for cold climates and many other ideas. The population is talking about it a lot, but any entrepreneurial leadership and mentoring is lacking as examples. The government and bureaucrats have started some entrepreneurial informative training workshops, but so far these have been inadequate, as a salaried bureaucrat teaching a would be entrepreneur, is like the BLIND teaching the BLIND.

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