But it can’t lag for too long because the Prime Minister hopes
the one dollar flat tax will collect $30 million in revenue. He committed in
the budget speech that if world oil prices go up – the tax may be revised
downward to keep the price of premium fuel around seven dollars a gallon. Here
are his remarks from the budget presentation.
[March 6th 2009]
Hon. Dean Barrow, Prime Minister
“We do not propose to introduce any new tax measures apart from an
increase in the rate of import duty leviable on gasoline and diesel oil. This
increase in the flat tax on petroleum is one of the tough decisions I spoke
of earlier. So let us remember the history of it all. When the prices for our
imported petroleum products were extremely high, government did not dither.
It stepped into the breach and gave up an unprecedented amount of revenue in
order to restrain the apparently unending upward spiral from completely wiping
out Belizean consumers. We kept on reducing the RRD and ultimately removed it
altogether, replacing it with an excessively low flat tax. The RRD removed at
the time was approximately $2.30 per US gallon; and the revenue sacrifice the
government made for the Belizean public amounted to 40 million dollars on annualized
basis. Even after the imported oil prices fell sharply and I was being pressed
to compensate by recouping some of the revenue loss, I refused. This government
was determined to maintain the great boon to the Belizean people for as long
as we possibly could.
Even now that we are forced to ask back for some of the abundance that
we passed along, we are ensuring that this doesn’t happen until April.
Thus there would have been as long a spell of incredibly low pump prices as
we could possibly have managed. I also note that the increase we are proposing
is only $1.00 per gallon on gasolines and diesel. This amounts to less than
one half of the taxes that were removed over the last year. It will still keep
diesel at below the $6.00 per gallon mark, and gasoline at below $7.00. Butane,
on which there is no tax, will not be affected.”
As Keith noted in his story, the price for a gallon of premium fuel
tomorrow will be $7.03.