Dean Flowers Calls for Greater Disclosure of Government Finances by Financial Secretary

Among the issues highlighted in the President of PSU’s statement, Flowers placed particular attention on the country’s fiscal transparency framework and the role of the Financial Secretary in ensuring that information on government’s financial position is made available to the public. During his interview with Love News, Flowers spoke about the Regulations and why he believes it remains an important part of the conversation.

Dean Flowers, President, PSU:“In essence, that regulation requires the financial secretary to say to the Belizean populace this is our fiscal strategy in terms of how we intend to meet our recurrent expenditures and our different obligations. This is the strategy how we’ll get there. It will be a mix of investment, a mix of loans, taxes, and on the other side of the equation these expenses that we’re projecting. The midyear report requires him to come back to us to say based on the budget that we prepared in terms of how we would have raised money to run this economy, this is how we’re performing. There were some shocks or some deviations in this area and that area. These are the reasons in great detail why we had to deviate.”

Flowers also addressed concerns surrounding the availability of financial records, questioning whether the information required under the regulations has been provided as expected.

Dean Flowers, President, PSU: “At the end of the year he’s supposed to come back to us and say, “This is how we performed.” And he’s supposed to explain to us in great details why did we take so much supplementals to the House? Why the hell did we borrow more than we projected to borrow? Why has our debt grown and how will we repay that? These are the things that this regulation requires by law. By law, that the financial secretary in consultation with the Accountant General and the Auditor General report to the Belizean people.”

The PSU president says the matter is one that deserves continued attention and discussion, as he continues to call for greater awareness surrounding the systems that govern public finances.