Belize Back on Good Governance Index Radar

Belize is back on the world’s corruption watchlist, and this time, officials say that’s actually a good thing. After more than a decade off the map, the country has returned to Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, putting Belize once again under the global microscope. Instead of shying away from that scrutiny, the Government says it welcomes the outside review, calling it a chance to measure real progress and expose the blind spots that still need fixing. According to Good Governance Unit Director Cesar Ross, the ranking isn’t about bragging rights, it’s about using the data to speed up long‑stalled reforms, from civil asset recovery laws to other anti‑corruption tools already waiting to be fully enforced. Here’s Cesar Ross.

 

Cesar Ross, Director, Good Governance Unit

“We have been listed as of February tenth, the transparency in international put out its corruption perception index, and in the index was Belize being listed after many years of been absent, since 2008 it has not been listed. The importance of the CPI: apart from doing a comparative with the rest of the countries in the world is that it gives us sort of a external diagnostics of how the rest of the world perceives the level of corruption, the level of good governance in the country of Belize. And so it helps guide what we need to do next. What are the things that we have been doing right and what we need to do next to ameliorate or to a large extent to get rid of corruption. There are specific indicators in the report as to what it is that they’re looking for. And so what we need to do is move more fast in implementing legislations and policies but also onboarding those that we already have, like the civil asset recovery – Civil Asset Recovery and Extreme Wealth Act, which was one of the, one of the biggest achievements of our government in 2023.”

 

Ross says the real work begins now, as Belize uses that outside scrutiny to push long‑delayed anti‑corruption reforms across the finish line.

 

Watch the full newscast here: