PM Briceño Extends Tax-Free Shopping Into New Year

The government is looking to give Belizeans a little more breathing room in their household budgets, not just during the Christmas shopping rush but well into the new year. Prime Minister John Briceño has announced that GST-free weekends will return in January 2027, while the December shopping breaks will also remain in place. The administration is also planning a thorough review of basic food basket items, as it looks for additional ways to ease the cost of living. The aim is to help families stretch their dollars further as they start the new year.

 

Prime Minister John Briceño

“We already announced two GST free weekends for December 2026. Now we all know that January, we call it maaga season, because people spend everything they have to try to have a good Christmas and when January come all of us are broke. So we were trying to find out how is it that we can find another way to give some kind of little relief to our citizens. That is why in January we will hold another GST free weekend on the twenty-third and twenty-fourth of January of 2027. We hope that this will bring some relief to households at the start of the new year. And if you notice when it comes to the GST this help everybody that goes to the store to buy and all our people need to go and buy at the store. We also recognize that the food basket we have, it is about forty products, that we need to review that basket. Some of the things are not the healthiest of food. So we need to look if there are healthier foods to put in that basket.”

 

The food basket review will be led by the Ministry of Human Development.

 

Attention readers: This online newscast is a direct transcript of our evening television broadcast. When speakers use Kriol, we have carefully rendered their words using a standard spelling system.

 

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