Floralia discusses Finance Ministry waiver

 It is been the unmovable position of Floralia’s competitors that the company was unfairly inserted in the transportation industry. They feel that the company enjoys the success it has had because of its political relationship with the current administration. Those claims continue to be ventilated by Floralia’s competitors. Those claims have also been denied by the management of Floralia and Transport Minister Rodwell Ferguson who says it’s all hogwash. Love News has received a copy of a letter written by Financial Secretary Joseph Waight, signing off on a request by Floralia for a duty exemption waiver in January last year. In our discussion with Marvin Vanzie, we asked him whether this is perceived as preferential treatment. 

Marvin Vanzie, Owner/Director, Floralia: “An interesting fact with six buses we paid $420,000 tax to the Belize Government. That $420,000 that’s enough to purchase eighteen of those old buses. So in terms of us paying our taxes, our GST, our environmental tax that stuff is legit. The other stuff that was waived is that any other Belizean can go and request. The law states that you just don’t mess with GST, don’t mess with environmental so no special privilege is given. So imagine that Dale $420,000 we paid in tax just for bringing in six buses so that we could offer AC luxury, comfort, reliability to the Belizean people. So I think there’s no shame in saying that we did our part in paying our taxes and then also saying that it was done at a risk so that we could offer the service that people really like.”

Reporter: But again you may find the naysayers saying well we could have collected more than $420,000 in taxes if Floralia didn’t get this waiver. There is the perception that there is ministerial involvement, there is involvement at the highest level. Just for the record is any of that true ? 

Marvin Vanzie, Owner/Director, Floralia: “Dale but same way they got conspiracies that say the earth is flat and the moon doesn’t really exist I mean there’s a whole bunch of stories you could make up and I think – you know I thank the media houses for being able to do their due diligence it’s their responsibility to keep us honest and to keep us performing well so as it pertains to anything related to the Ministry of Finance I think you know they could talk directly to them I’m not the government I’m just a private entity that we have 24,000 Belizeans traveling with us and we are working extremely hard we’re a small team, we work extremely hard to make those people happy and again our goal is to grow like any other business.”