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The Prime Minister apologized for the undue haste - but said there is no other choice:...

Rt. Hon. Dean Barrow- Prime Minister
"The reason for the rush is that this is a consequence of the pressures, not to put too fine a point on it, that have been brought to bear on our jurisdiction by the industrialized countries, and in this case in particularly by the EU and by the OECD. In its analysis of information on areas of tax transparency, fair taxation and implementation of anti base errosion and profit sharing measures, the so called code of conduct group, which is really an agency of the afore mentioned OECD-EU axis, that group found that Belize's export processing zone and our international business companies regimes are bought considered to be carrying out harmful tax practices. You know that we introduced at the last sitting a designated processing areas bill which sets up a regime to replace the EPZ regime. Again, all as a consequence of what these people abroad are insisting on. They're review of the EPZ act, which as I said is to be replaced by the DPA, in their review the EU sited the following: that the 20 year exception from income and business tax with an option to extend for further period, the losses incurred on the tax for the day period, being carried forward for offset against profits for a period of 5 years following the tax holiday, imports into and exports into an EPZ enterprise being exempt from customs duties and similar taxes, proceeds from the sale of stock or other complete owner interests in an EPZ enterprise not being subject to any tax on capital gains. All this they found, together with discretionary clauses, such as the section 131, in which an international business company may elect to be exempted from taxes under the income and business tax act. All this, they said, obliged us to amend. There was a further meeting at the Central Bank because these amendments, not just to the income and business tax act but the IBC act, which we will come to in a little bit later, are so wide ranging that we had to try to guard against every possible effect of the law of unintended consequences."

Hon. John Briceno- Leader of the Opposition
"We just got the bill on our hands right and madam speaker we really can't debate this bill because we don't know what is in it."

Rt. Hon. Dean Barrow
"Did you really thought, madam speaker, that with our being able to provide experts to go through the bill with members in committee provision by provision that that might serve to excuse us from the wrath, which in normal circumstances would be justifiable, excuse us from the wrath of the opposition in trying to get this through today but I really do want to crave your indulgence and the leader's indulgence for us to try and pass this today. The people in Europe expect that it will happen and I hate to have to admit that I said they are our monitors, perhaps the better word is masters. But unfortunately this is one of those circumstances in which it appears that sovereignty is much overrated because we don't have much of a choice. The blacklisting with which we are threatened is not just a matter of imposing punitive measures with respect to our exports to Europe and in various other ways. As the Central Bank tells us that blacklisting, if it were to happen, will actually make correspondent banking relations, or continued corresponding banking relations difficult if not impossible."

The pieces of legislation were pushed through today.