Another article on housing from Belize -
08/11/98
P.M. secures $100 million loan during
six-day trip to Taiwan
In what is perhaps his biggest economic move since his
government took office two months ago, Prime Minister Hon.
Said Musa, at the end of a six-day business trip to the island
nation of Taiwan, was able to secure a $100 million soft grant
loan to help fund a housing construction scheme, and other
financial assistance for other projects.
The prime minister, who was accompanied by his wife and
Minister of Budget Planning and Economic Development,
Investment and Trade, Hon. Ralph Fonseca, said that he was
also able to meet with potential Taiwanese investors willing to
visit Belize to look at investment opportunities.
In an interview with the Reporter on Thursday, Prime Minister
Musa said that the disbursment of the housing project loan is
scheduled for a five-year period, in which U.S.$10million will be
available each year.
Musa said that under the loan agreement, Belize has been given
a five-year grace period and that the terms of repayment is
over a 20-year period. While there has been no final
aggrangement as to how much interest Belize will be paying
back to Taiwan, Musa said that he is confident that it will be no
more than five percent. "The interest rate is being finalized with
the central bank of Taiwan, and it will probably be around five
percent; no more than that," he said
Although the $100 million loan will not come on stream until the
next financial year, which begins in April of next year, Mr.
Musa said that his government has already began looking at
ways in which they can get the housing program started.
He said that in the meantime, additional funding will be available
shortly, as early as the next three weeks, to ensure liquid cash
flow to potential small and medium size enterprises.
But with the change of governments and with some of the
agreements with Taiwan overlapping, questions have arisen
over what Belize has collected from Taiwan, and what it is yet
to collect.
Former prime minister of Belize, Mr. Manuel Esquivel, told the
Reporter that during his govern-ment's last term in office, $112
million was secured from the Taiwanese government for
housing and infrastructure projects. He said that of that amount,
as much as $36 million, remains in the Taiwanese hands. He
said that of the U.S.$10 million his government had secured for
small and medium size enterprises, only two million dollars was
used. Prime Minister Musa agreed that some money which had
already been approved remained in the Taiwanese purse, and
he said that Taiwan has given the go-ahead for the remaining of
the money to come into Belize.
Musa said that there was also an additional $20 million, which
was secured for the paving of the Southern Highway. That
project is expected to commence shortly, he said.
Musa said that during the trip, his delegation also held
discussions on the future of the Libertad factory and reported
that a separate deal is currently underway for the reactivation
of the factory.
He said that a team of Taiwanese engineers will soon arrive in
Belize to see how best the factory could be used.
When asked how Belizeans can expect to benefit from the
goodwill of Taiwan, Musa said "We will be able to carry out our
mandate to build 10,000 new homes over five years... This will
go a long way in meeting the demand (for houses), and
particularly, the emphasis will be on low and middle income
housing for the Belizean people.”
On the issue of attracting potential investors, Musa said that
during a six-day trip to Taiwan, there wereseveral investors
who were interested in areas such as farming, food processing
and packaging. "We (also) met with the executives of a
computer company called ACER, one of the 15 biggest
manufacturers of PCs in the world," he said. "We tried to
encourage them to come and do some business in Belize.
Having them in Belize will create lots of jobs in terms of data
processing. We also met people with interest in packaging and
have also tried to attract the small industries over there."
Musa said, "We emphasise to them that we are not interested in
investors who want to get into the distribution trade, we have
enough of those, what we are looking for is investors in the
productive sectors."
When asked what does Taiwan expect from Belize in return for
all the aid, Musa said that all the nation asks is that Belize
continues to support Taiwan's sovereignty in international
organizations.
"We have given Taiwan our full support at the United Nations,
that's all they are asking for," he said. "I believe that we will
have a very fruitful and productive relationship with them. They
understand the problems we are faced with, and the needs for
debt restructuring, to build proper and decent houses for our
people, and to better our education and health care sectors.
The prime minister said, "Like with other governments we will
be working closely with them."
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