Central Bank Still Tackling the PetroCaribe Audit

The Government of Belize continues to negotiate with Venezuela to restructure the current Petrocaribe debt. During Prime Minister John Briceño’s visit to Venezuela last November, he was able to negotiate a sixty percent discount – which translates to about a quarter billion Belize dollars in savings. Although the balance significantly decreased, there is still no final value figure of what the current debt is. Love News asked the Minister of State in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Christopher Coye, for an update on that audit. 

Christopher Coye, Minister of State, Ministry of Finance: “The Central Bank of Belize has been in direct communications with the relevant Venezuelan authorities in that reconciliation process. I don’t think they’re that far off but it’s not finalized yet it’s just timing but clearly there is an agreement on the discount the 60% discount on the debt so if it is a discrepancy of let’s say $20 million dollars discrepancy it will mean a 40% more of the twenty million so it would let’s say add $8 million or not but overall we’re looking at maybe a quarter billion Belize dollars in savings generally. So it’s a significant achievement that will even further reduce our external debt, our total debt and our debt to GDP ratio which I think the IMF even without the Venezuela discount already determined it to be 68.5% of GDP. Once that is accounted for we will be around 63-64% of GDP. We are almost a decade ahead of target.”