Government Approves $1.1M Boost for University of Belize

After a series of meetings last week, the government has approved an additional one point one million dollars for the University of Belize (UB).  The additional funding will bring the government’s annual subvention from seven point six million to eight point seven million dollars.  Minister of Education, Oscar Requena, spoke on the discussions had with the university’s Board members and noted that going forward, the Ministry of Finance will be providing technical assistance to the university to capitalize on its existing resources.  

Oscar Requena, Minister of Education: “We convened a meeting with representatives from the Ministry of Finance, myself, our CEO at the Ministry of Education, we also had the chairman of the board of directors from UB and the president. We listened to their presentation and essentially what they indicated that the university is indeed having a shortfall in terms of their finances and that to be able to meet the request from the union and faculty they would need an additional $1.1 million. We deliberated for quite some times and you know looked at how their finances are being used to meet these payments and at the end we agreed that indeed the university did need additional support and with the permission of you know the Prime Minister and the Cabinet we decided that we would provide the additional $1.1 million dollars in support. Essentially shared with us you know the financial position of the university and the justification as to why they really needed the additional support. We discussed at length and in the end certain recommendations were made which I discussed with the Prime Minister and essentially we got the go ahead that the Ministry of Education would write the University of Belize giving the approval for the $1.1 million dollars to be given to them. We also discussed other issues in relation to how the university can raise additional funds. We looked at program areas that can be developed particularly in relation to meeting the developmental needs of our country among other areas. Certainly the university agreed that that is an area we can work on and they also requested support from the Ministry of Finance so essentially a subcommittee has been put in place to deal with that.”

The University of Belize Faculty and Staff Union was asking for an annual subvention of ten million dollars to accommodate the university’s expenditure, primarily salaries for the faculty and staff.