Last night you saw a whole lot of the Prime Minister on the news - making headlines for his remarks against a sitting Supreme Court judge - among many other things.
But, what we didn’t have time to bring you was the event where he made all those remarks.
That’s the annual Prime Minister’s Business Forum. It was held under the“Embracing Innovation for Economic Prosperity†- but by the end of the day, the PM made it clear there was a limit to the amount of innovation the pubic sector could embrace. Jules Vasquez has the story:
The 2019 Prime Minister’s Business Forum was held for the first time at the Civic Center - the event staged to showcase the Barrow Administration’s focus on large scale public sector driven infrastructure works. A nice idea, but the thrumming air conditioners and the terrible acoustics in the Civic kind of negated it. With that, the PM played to the audience and yielded to the paramountcy of the private sector:
Rt. Hon. Dean Barrow - Prime Minister
"But even a devotee such as I of large scale, growth-driving construction of roads and bridges, will immediately concede that ultimately an economy goes nowhere without the private sector. That I am ultimately no statist. I still believe that when all is said and done Government, even big government, must not only acknowledge but privilege the private sector.
But, it’s a private sector which still struggles to work with a sclerotic public sector:
Rt. Hon. Dean Barrow
"On the subject of the ease of doing business, Belize is making progress on the ground notwithstanding rankings. I think particularly of the tremendous advances that have been recorded in speed of process at the Lands Department.
"There is, of course, the matter of taxation reform which has persistently topped the list of demands from the private sector for attention. As announced a few months ago, GOB is making progress towards improving administrative efficiencies through the amalgamation of the GST and Income Tax Departments and the procurement and installation of a modern Integrated Tax Administration Management Information System."
But it can’t be as ultra-modern as the one used in this man’s country of Estonia, which is leading the world in e-government services:
Linner Viik - Founder Estonian eGov’t Academy
"We have right now a road map that by 2020 there will be 50 public services automated to the level there will never ever be a human or civil servant component in the process."
Rt. Hon. Dean Barrow
"He was advocating for a system that would get rid of the human element or minimize the human element to the kind of infinitesimal degree that would see us laying off public officers.
Jules Vasquez
"14,000 people..."
Rt. Hon. Dean Barrow
"That's crazy so, I need to say so, I agree with you completely. That very sought of, I don't know, whitewashed, antiseptic chased vision of things just clicking, that's not my sense of how the real world ought to work in our Belize."
Jules Vasquez
"Right and that is because in our Belize, the public sector provides a lot of employment and it especially provides a lot of employment for people in general but certainly the government of the day, every government stacks the public service with its loyal supporters."
Rt. Hon. Dean Barrow
"I don't know if I would use the word stacks but there is a degree to which indeed particular administration will look out for their own with respect to public service employment, I would go that far."
Jules Vasquez
"Would you make a commitment to do things that there is transparency and not corruption in terms of creating a block chain in the document system for nationality or lands."
Rt. Hon. Dean Barrow
"Absolutely, block chain in the document system, absolutely, all for it."
You can find a stream of the entire forum at the Government Press Office Facebook page.
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