By Belize Live News Staff: Belize City’s council clears less than a million dollars a year in net profit. It is now proposing a bond offering worth $46 million. The gap between those two numbers is where Deputy Mayor Eluide Miller began his explanation.
“I would not want for anybody to get the idea that we’re taking on $46 million in new investment,” Miller said when asked about the plan. The bulk of the figure, he explained, is money the council already owes. “We had over $20 million worth of existing investment, and so what is happening is that we are reprofiling that, meaning that we are turning it from short term investments, one to two year investments in the city, into longer term investments, five to ten year.”
Think of it as refinancing the mortgage: debts coming due fast get stretched into slower, longer repayments, buying the council breathing room on its annual bills. Though not all of the offering is old money in new clothes. “We’re also taking on some new investments,” the Deputy Mayor conceded, and the precise mix of restructured versus fresh borrowing is a detail the public will want spelled out as the offering proceeds.
Miller’s confidence rests on a record he recited with evident pride: no missed payments, ever. “We have never defaulted on an interest or principal payment, even through the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, even through the impacts of Hurricane Lisa,” he said. “We have been able to meet every single payment.” The council’s bonds, he added, rank among the most attractive offerings on a liquid local market, and the safety nets behind them, the interest reserve fund and the sinking fund, “continue to be managed properly.”
It is a genuinely strong record for a municipal borrower, and reprofiling into longer terms is a standard tool of public finance rather than a red flag in itself. Yet the taxpayer’s math does not vanish under the technical language. Stretching $46 million, about US$23 million, across five to ten years means the city carries its obligations further into the future, and a council earning under a million a year in net profit leaves slim margin if the economy, or another Lisa, tests those reserve funds for real.
The market will now render its verdict on the offering, and the city will live with the terms. Miller’s pitch is that Belize City’s word is good, and the payment history backs him. The counterweight is written in the annual accounts, and every taxpayer can read it.
What do you think, Belize City, confidence earned or caution warranted? Let us know in the comments.
