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Darrell Bradley - Mayor of Belize City

"So that cost us 100,000 dollars every month, so that what the council is doing is that we are getting one facility that we are actually stretching out an existing facility we have at Heritage Bank where we spent currently 20,000 dollars on and what we will do is that we will include in all of this the paying off of those litigation debts. So that we will no longer have the 100,000 dollars in terms a drain on monthly outflows and one of the things that Heritage has agreed to do is that they will keep the monthly payments at the 20,000 dollars so that we are actually going to save substantially in terms of our cash flow and we think that will allow us quite comfortably to carry out these projects."

"Essentially what we're doing is we're consolidating all our debt through this facility, we are paying off our litigation debt and then we are stretching out the payments that loan was supposed to expire in 2019. We're stretching that out for an additional period of years and one of the things that we are seeing is that at that time, a substantial amount of the municipal bond, more than half of it would have been retired because we will retire substantial amount of the municipal bond within this term of office and so that will see a significant ease in terms of our cash flow. So that at this time the council felt that it was appropriate for us to finish out some of these projects, especially because the projects are so needed."

Jules Vasquez

"Okay then the global figure being spent is 3.6 million. Am I correct?"

Darrell Bradley - Mayor of Belize City

"We will include the Commercial Centre, we will include the paying off all of this litigation debt and we will include the doing of these remedial projects including the 7 concreting streets that I mentioned and then the earth and upgrades. I can give you an exact total but its going to be about 4 million dollars."

Jules Vasquez

"Okay now, we know that as a policy and practice, government of Belize it generally tries to avoid commercial loans. It always tried to get concessionary loans. Why did you all investigate opportunities at a commercial bank when perhaps Social Security is available at a lower percentage?"

Darrell Bradley - Mayor of Belize City

"We're not a sovereign entity in relation to being able to touch international funding."

Jules Vasquez

"You can still touch Social Security though."

Darrell Bradley - Mayor of Belize City

"This is an existing loan that we have at Heritage Bank and this was a loan actually that was from the former mayor's time and what we are doing we're just stretching out the life of the loan so that it's not unpresidential that we would get commercial facilities."

"It's not an accurate picture to say that well you going commercial. We have always gone commercial but the reality is that our funding options have been varied and we've always maintained that."

Reporter

"What is the interest rate on the loan?"

Darrell Bradley - Mayor of Belize City

"The interest rate on the loan in 10% and that's the existing interest rate. We looked at various options but the reason why I think this is such a perfect fit is that we maintain our cash out flows at 20,000 dollars and we save that 100,000 dollar payment and this makes the funding opportunity ideal."