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How Did The Economy Do In Last Quarter?
posted (March 25, 2015)

The budget will be debated tomorrow in Belmopan where the Opposition will get ample opportunity to criticize the UDP government's economic performance. And while all kinds of figures will be flying – what do the real numbers people, the statisticians say?

Well, the Statistical Institute of Belize released their final figures for October to December 2014, and invited the press to their presentation today.

Here's what those numbers looked like:

Jefte Ochaeta – Statistician I

"As of October to December of 2014 we're observing that our primary industries increased by 0.2% and that was mainly due because fishing activities are showing a decline of 29.3% where we had less revenue in most our fish products. Shrimp exports for October to December account to be 12.1 million less than what was exported in 2013 for the same period. And you can see the following number that also was hiking was conch, which was basically 5 million less in the same period exported when compared to 2013. However we had an expansion in the agricultural activities. It was a 23.2% increase where we had bananas increasing by 7,700 tons which is basically 30.2% more of the production that happened in 2013. That is accounted because in the year 2014, we had a favourable climate for banana production. We didn't have too much rain and we didn't really have a lot of dry season - so it was favourable for the banana."

As seen here, livestock production in the last quarter has had the best performance in the past 7 years. There were 8.2 thousand head of cattle produced, 2,700 more than in 2013, and more than double what was produced in 2008. The trend is similar for the pig farmers, where 4,500 head of swine were produced, almost double what it was in 2013. In the poultry industry, SIB numbers say that 9.6 million pounds of poultry were produced, 0.9 million more than in 2013.

But, while those industries grew, the secondary industries such as manufacturing and mining, specifically, the petroleum industry were down.

Citrus was down by a massive 58%, which as we showed you yesterday, can be attributed to the citrus greening disease.

So, how did the last quarter performance affect the overall economic year of 2014? Well, not that much. SIB estimates that the economy has grown by 3.6%:

Jefte Ochaeta

"At that period it was measured that the growth domestic product of Belize accounted 1.6 increase to what was produced in 2013 for the same period. The cumulative growth for 2014 shows an estimate that the economy has expanded by 3.6% Remember this figure here will be modified because we're just using our quarterly figures as an estimate of what happened in the year. But as we get more information, the number will be modified for the actual growth for 2014. The annual estimated as you can see our GDP was about 2.7 billion dollars at constant prices and that's basically an increase of 10 million dollars from last year at constant prices. We said that there was a change within the sectors that increased the GPD. The primary sector had the largest increase which was mainly due because of agriculture production and solid fishery production in the first half of the year. Then the secondary services, they grew by 2.2% and we're accounting that to some increased in the citrus and electricity, trade and tourism services in the country."

While there was an expansion of the economy, the secondary services declined by 0.3 percent, and the SIB is attributing that to petroleum, which is expected, since the natural depletion of petroleum reservoirs continue to take place.

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