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V. Analysis and Conclusions Clearly the present laws have not kept pace with the development during the last two decades of the proliferation of NGOs and the scope of their work with relation to important sectors of society and essential areas such as health, education, culture and economic development. The Companies Act is an outdated law originally passed in 1914, with few amendments over the years. It reflects the prevailing laissez-faire philosophy of that time (and this?) and is meant to give maximum freedom to private enterprise, with most controls within it having to do with the protection of shareholders and creditors.
As mentioned above, there are only two provisions relating to non-profit organizations in that Act -one limiting their right to own land and the other permitting them to avoid using the word "Limited" in their name.
There does exist the possibility under the Act of making regulations to govern NGOs in terms of accountability, transparency and so on, since section 20 states that in granting a license to avoid using the word "Limited" the Minister may impose such conditions and regulations as he thinks fit, but no such conditions or regulations have ever been made, and in any case it would be undesirable to allow such controls to be imposed at the whim of a Minister and in a manner which could vary from one body to another depending on the wishes of the a minister. This would only provide another instrument of political control, which would be most undesirable.
No new laws have been passed to deal with the presence of the NGOs that have become very important of late. In the first half decade after independence a number of NGOs emerged and some already existing ones became active in a new way. This can be explained, on the one hand, by the need felt by certain sections of the population which these agencies sought to meet and on the other hand by new opportunities for funding that emerged after independence.
The effects of the world economic crisis began to be felt in Belize immediately after independence. With the collapse of the sugar market, all sectors of the economy were affected, resulting in growing budget deficits, declining foreign exchange reserves and an inability to meet debt repayment schedules in the context of dependence on an export industry with a declining world market and limited domestic financial capital. By 1983, government was having problems meeting its wage and supplies bills.
Belize went first to the International Monetary Fund in 1983 and again in 1984. A series of restrictive and contractionary policy measures were introduced aimed at improving government's fiscal performance and stabilizing the balance of payments. USAID established its mission here in 1983 and dramatically increased its funding to Belize early in 1985.
The contractionary policies implemented during the 1984/85 period included new taxes, freezing public sector wages, increasing interest rates, and raising the liquid asset requirements of the commercial banks. Real GDP stagnated in 1985 as sugar earnings fell again. The long term solutions being implemented revolved around the promotion of the free market mechanism through a gradual disbanding of barriers to trade, subsidies and price controls, and facilitating foreign capital flows.
There was a shift in the approach to economic development from one of attempting to address fundamental sociopolitical and structural issues to an openeconomy monetarist approach concerned with the trappings of economic growth, expanding reserves and per capita GNP. Chronic problems of distribution inequalities (of wealth, income and land), unemployment, and social sector decline were ignored. It was decided that the model of economic development to be applied in Belize was to be one led by a private sector in an unfettered market dependent on foreign capital. The role of the public sector became to provide incentives for the inflow of private foreign capital and to develop infrastructure to facilitate the accumulation process.
These policies resulted in greater hardships for the poor and marginalized, including small farmers who could no longer rely on government-guaranteed markets at subsidized prices. Escalating prices, freed from controls, hurt the consumers as job opportunities contracted and government expenditure on social services declined. At the same time that things got tougher for the people, government was able to fill less and less of their needs. This created a demand for services by other organizations.
New opportunities for funding were also opening up to NGOs. One of the major sources for certain NGOs was the USAID, which also instigated the creation of a number of NGOs dealing with health, drugs, management training and marketing. Now that Belize was independent and there was a lot of attention focused on Central America, several European agencies agreed to fund several new or resurrected NGOs. Taken together, these NGOs have spent considerable sums of money in the economy, and delivered significant services to the people, thereby helping to ameliorate the difficulties created by the new government policies. It can be safely stated that without the actions of these NGOs government would have found itself in a much more difficult situation than it did, particularly with regard to the provision of social services to the needy and production opportunities for poor people. Still, the legal regime has failed to recognize and keep pace with this reality.
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