PM Says Government Absorbing Fuel Costs Amid Bus Fare Dispute

As tensions continue to mount between government and bus operators over fare increases, on Friday, Prime Minister John Briceño told the media that government has already been absorbing significant costs to shield consumers from rising fuel prices.  He pointed to the most recent spike in fuel prices, noting that government intervened to cushion the impact by taking on a substantial portion of the increase, an effort he says comes at a real cost to national revenues.

John Briceño, Prime Minister of Belize: “As to fuel, we have been cutting the taxes. Already we are giving up about $60 million already.”

Reporter: 60 or 80 ? 
John Briceño, Prime Minister of Belize: “60, that’s what I said, 60 million in the house. I think now what happened because now we just gave up now on gasoline, on premium. Yeah, we just gave up some taxes on the premium. We’re not giving the entire increases to the public. We’re cutting so I believe that now that that just happened this week. Sunday. So I think that when you include that probably it will be close to $80 million. Remember $200 million, we are getting $200 million of excise taxes on fuel. And so it is a big lick. It’s hurting us. I had ministry of finance prepare a cabinet paper to our colleagues so our colleagues could also, you know, they know but I want to make sure that they understand, guys, we need to look how we’re going to spend. We need to see where we can curtail spending. We need to be able to especially do the carpooling with government employees, whereby instead of then they are up and down if they could carpool to reduce the fuel. You know we already have a system in place whereby we track your vehicle and after hours we shut it down if possible. That already is saving us a few million dollars. So we need to look in every which way where we can curtail if there are certain areas in capital II spending that we can hold back, at least until we know what’s going to happen, then we will do so.”

Up to news time tonight, the cost of premium, regular and diesel are $14.66, $13.82 and $14.55, respectively.