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Hon. John Briceno, PUP Party Leader
"The facts are that we are in this position because of the UDP incompetence and the UDP messed and this is the UDP superbond. They made certain promises to the bond holders that they were going to reduce the level from 60% and here we are at 81% - that they were going to have fiscal discipline. Yet they continue to have massive deficits. Now when you look at all of this and that the Prime Minister now is going once again for a renegotiation. We need to take into consideration that the Prime Minister is on his way out. He doesn't really cares what is going to happened to the Belizean people, because the bondholders are not going to give in unless there is massive pain on the Belizean people. Taxes will have to go up. for some time, the IMF has been saying that the GST has to go up to 15%, been saying and the Prime Minister admitted it, that they will have to cut down expenses or the expenditures from the government, that is a code word for retrenchment that retrenchment is coming sooner, more sooner than later."

Jules Vasquez, 7News
"The superbond is still trying... to accrued while your party was in government the last time you were a big factor of the government and the original loans rated I believe were like 17 loans with an interest rate of probably 12%."

Hon. John Briceno, PUP Party Leader
"It was 8%."

Jules Vasquez, 7News
"No sir, the superbond 1 dropped it to 8%. Then superbond dropped it to 5.75%."

Hon. John Briceno, PUP Party Leader
"6%."

Jules Vasquez, 7News
"The original loans rated average was 12%. So then the problem with retiring this debt is a problem that really started when you were in government. How do you respond to that?"

Hon. John Briceno, PUP Party Leader
"That has already been addressed Jules. You can't continue to blame the people over and over and over. If the Prime Minister was doing the right things, managing this economy properly, investing the money - remember, 375 million dollars of Petrocaribe money was squandered."

Jules Vasquez, 7News
"The original superbond, most of the 17 loans or at least 8 of them were undertaken without the approval of the parliament. It was engineered through the Central Bank for the, I believe the express purpose of avoiding having to take it through parliament. Now those are the same loans that are wrapped into this superbond situation. Is that something that you were aware of at the time that the Central Bank was undertaking sovereign loans or loans that the state is still responsible for? Was it a deliberate act of obfuscation to direct it through the Central Bank, and in one case the DFC."

Hon. John Briceno, PUP Party Leader
"I don't think it's a matter of us not being aware that these loans were taking place. Of course we were aware that these loans were taking place. But what I think what happened was that there was not absolute clarity in the finance and audit act. There was not clarity to say that all loans must go to the house."

"If this government continues to operate the way it has been operating over the past 8 years, you could renegotiate the superbond and 3-4 years from now, they will have the same problem."

Jules Vasquez, 7News
"The government needs to be successful so that there is not a huge burden or a greater burden placed on tax payers in the next fiscal year, Do you in that regard at least hope for the government's success?"

Hon. John Briceno, PUP Party Leader
"I have always made it very clear that I am first a Belizean. I want things to go well in this country and if the government has embarked in a renegotiation of the superbond, of course I want it to be successful."

Today's "Latin Finance Daily Brief", an online news outlet quotes, Sean Newman, a US portfolio manager as saying that, quote, "bondholders should come together to aggressively demand that the terms be met." He adds, quote, "Before the current government came to power, the country was actually operating with a minor fiscal deficit. What the prime minister has done since coming into office is ramp up spending."