The budget for 2013/2014 will be presented tomorrow, but there's like zero buzz about it. And that's probably because it promises to be a fairly un-inpsiring affair, with few sugarplums for the citizenry. In fact, in the wake of the Superbond renegotiation, it kind of has to be a grim affair - to demonstrate to bond-holders that Belize remains poor - while the Superbond in its original form would have made us broke.
But, while that is the context for tomorrow's presentation, within the wider regional context, Belize is doing surprisingly well. This is what we take from a CDB press conference held earlier this month in Barbados. President of the CDB Dr. Warren Smith said that Belize leads the region in growth:
"At least 11 of our borrowing member countries saw some growth in 2012, the best performers - as we indicated last year, I believe - were Belize and Guyana - they had the best rates of growth and Haiti, continued to enjoy growth as they pursued the recover following the earthquake.
Again, performance in Agriculture, we really see only Belize and St Lucia and Grenada with performance worth mentioning – the rest were either in the very low growth zone, or not at all, or negative. So that, what was it that led to growth in these countries that experienced growth? Mainly positive weather factors.
The construction sector, again it's Belize and to a lesser degree Haiti, only two countries really saw any kind of growth in the construction sector."
cdb from 7News Belize on Vimeo.
The growth in the agricultural sector is owing to the rebound in the banana and citrus industries.
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