7 News Belize

Mayor Says Muni Bond Being Paid, Timely
posted (January 6, 2015)
In the last segment you heard the mayor talking about debt. One that we didn't get to is the biggest one: the municipal bond. He told the media today that the first tranche of the Municipal Bond, has been paid off comfortably.

He says that this is not only good news for the Council, but an independent audit of the earnings from this first tranche indicates that if the council continues to manage its finances in this manner will be able to make payment on the second tranche in 7 years:

Darrell Bradley, Mayor - Belize City
"The municipal bond which is a big part of the carrying debt of the Belize City Council. You will see that the audit mentions a debt obligation of approximately 21 million dollars. A significant amount of that is the bond itself and the first tranche of the municipal bond which is the 2 year bond was repaid on the 24th December, 2014 and the principal was repaid together with interest and that represented a payment of 1.5 million dollars or 7.5% of the bond and the sinking fund which is being manage by the Central Bank has a comfortable surplus. So that the municipality is able to comfortably meet the repayments and just to recap very briefly, our subvention and the monies that the municipality receives from the head tax goes directly into the Central Bank of Belize to capitalize the sinking fund and just as how we are releasing our independent audited financials which governs our operational fund, we also have an independent audit done by PKF also for the sinking fund itself and that indicates that we are able to comfortably meet the repayment targets. The first repayment target was just the 24th December. The next repayment target is 3 years from now and at that point 50% of the bond has to be paid back and our projections indicate that we will comfortably again meet those repayments, interest and principal. So members of the public do not have any fear in relation to the financial position of the city council because the bond that we created we are already paying it back because we have met quite comfortably the first principal payment."

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