Bermuda records seventh COVID-19 death | Caribbean - Jamaica Gleaner

HAMILTON, Bermuda, CMC – Bermuda recorded its seventh COVID-19 death on Saturday as Finance Minister Curtis Dickinson announced that he would need to rewrite this year’s budget because of the battering from the global coronavirus pandemic.

In making the announcement late Saturday, the Ministry of Health said the victim would not be identified, but added that all 157 of the latest tests for the virus were cleared.

To date, Bermuda has recorded 114 confirmed cases, 51 of whom have recovered while 40 people are being monitored by public health officials.

There are 56 active cases, with 16 people aged between 57 and 91 in hospital.

Dickinson told viewers during a discussion on social media that he expects to have to borrow more cash in the battle to reboot the economy.

The national debt already stood at US$2.67 billion before the crisis started.

He said the government faces an estimated loss in tax revenues of US$150 million to $200 million because of the economic chaos caused by COVID-19 and the crisis has put the island’s economy in “a new world”.

He added that the government was looking at a range of options, from an increase in financial services to broadening the island’s funds business as well as “different investment vehicles”.

According to the Finance Minister, an estimated 8,000 to 9,000 people, about a quarter of the island’s workforce, were unemployed as result of the crisis and that he had been forced to break “a whole host of rules” to get unemployment benefit payments to people who had not received them.

Dickinson said he would make a presentation to cabinet on Tuesday to allow people to make hardship withdrawals of $10,000 from private pensions.

He said it would be “disingenuous of him to say that economic considerations” had not factored in the government’s decision to relax the shelter-in-place restrictions after four weeks of lockdown.

Saying the billion-dollar budget for this financial year, which he announced in February, would have to be “recast”, Dickinson added, “I do anticipate having to borrow more money for the simple reason that I was going to borrow more money anyway to start with because we had forecasted a $20 million budget deficit.

“We have borrowed $150 million. We actually have a credit line … (but) we haven’t drawn down on the line yet. Those funds will be used to provide for the unemployment benefit programme and to fund deficits. We will look at potentially borrowing more money as a way to promote stimulus in the economy. The exact amount of that money I have not decided yet.

“I am sensitive to the existing debt burden the country currently has and I have to be mindful that any money that I borrow has to be paid back,” said the Finance Minister who added that it would “not be unreasonable” for the public sector to make “some kind of concession”.

“We’re looking for ideas from everybody,” he said.

Follow The Gleaner on Twitter and Instagram @JamaicaGleaner and on Facebook @GleanerJamaica. Send us a message on WhatsApp at 1-876-499-0169 or email us at onlinefeedback@gleanerjm.com or editors@gleanerjm.com.

Let's block ads! (Why?)