This evening, a portion of the BNTU leadership is meeting at its Belize City headquarters to discuss next steps in ongoing negotiations with the government.
That union's general membership has still not concluded voting on whether to accept or reject government's proposal. But, reports this evening say that they could be considering staging a sickout tomorrow - but, we stress at this hour, that is not confirmed - it is only rumoured.
But, in their ongoing negotiations with government - one thing the union is looking at is where GOB can save money or generate more revenue. And a lavish package of fiscal incentives recently signed into law would definitely raise their eyebrows. It was gazetted, but had escaped any public attention until Jules Vasquez got his hands on it yesterday. Here's what he saw:
The Caye Chapel Company says it is spearheading a 200 million US dollar investment project on the island and that they are bringing a Four Seasons Resort to Belize. And government has rewarded them with a lavish package of fiscal incentives contained in this statutory instrument, number 57 of 2025. Project completion was set for 2025 - here's what the team said in 2023:
Jorge Vargas, Caye Chapel Development Team
"And for the second part of 2025 we will open the hotel so the next 24 months will be of heavy construction that we will be able to open the hotel before the end of 2025."
But that looks like it may be another blown deadline for a project that has had many in its lifetimes. This fiscal incentive package now made into law lasts for 5 years and it exempts them from import duty, revenue replacement duty, excise duty, the payment of business tax, and, unusually, even General Sales tax. So that means they will only pay 3% Environmental Tax on a 654Million Belize dollar investment.
That means with this package of incentives, government passing up - possibly - more than a hundred million dollars in revenue. And even on the 3% environmental tax - no freight will be factored into those calculations - which makes that collection about 20% less.
Tax breaks that are likely not going to escape the attention of the unions who are fighting against the narrative that their pay raise will cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars.
We did reach out to the Caye Chapel Development Team for a comment, but up to news time we hadn't gotten any yet.
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