In a live streamed interview with CTV3 broadcast on his official Facebook page on the morning of July 9, 2026, Belize Prime Minister John Briceño officially confirmed that the long-standing $10,000 government procurement payment threshold will be adjusted upward, ending weeks of public speculation and heated debate triggered by recent controversial comments.
The controversy erupted after former Miss Universe Belize Isabella Zabaneh publicly called for an increase to the current spending cap. Her remarks sparked immediate widespread public backlash, especially coming as public trust in government procurement processes was already stretched thin following the unresolved ‘Mira Millions’ scandal, which left many Belizeans skeptical about government spending practices.
In her comments, Zabaneh argued that the existing $10,000 threshold places unnecessary administrative strain on the office of financial secretaries and amounts to excessive top-down micromanagement across all levels of government. Instead of criticizing Zabaneh for her outspoken position, Briceño came to her defense, describing the backlash against her as ‘unfortunate’ and praising her for the courage to speak up about an open secret many in politics are too afraid to address publicly.
Briceño explained that the $10,000 cap was a reasonable policy when Belize’s national total budget remained below $1 billion. Today, however, the national budget has expanded to $1.8 billion, with the government annually spending between $400 million and $500 billion on goods and services from third-party vendors. At this scale, Briceño noted that enforcing the $10,000 cap for all small purchases has become functionally unmanageable for administrative teams.
Critics have raised concerns that raising the threshold could reopen the same loopholes that allowed for corrupt spending practices in the past, particularly the widespread tactic of splitting large contracts into hundreds of sub-$10,000 transactions to avoid competitive bidding and public scrutiny. To address these risks, the Prime Minister outlined that all purchases, even those falling under the new higher threshold, will be processed through a unified, publicly accessible portal administered by the incoming Central Procurement Unit. This new centralized system, Briceño assured, will make the once-common loophole of hundreds of under-the-threshold payments going to a single company impossible to continue.
The reform marks a key update to Belize’s public procurement framework, balancing administrative efficiency with new transparency measures to rebuild public confidence in government spending.