Agreement reached on new western border fees
After much negotiation, government officials and the business community have come to agreement over new fees to be implemented at the Western border. Overnight parking has now been set at fifteen dollars for small vehicles and thirty for container trucks and buses, down from the initial twenty and forty dollars imposed by B.M.A. To use the ramp at the border, pickup trucks will pay twenty bucks, trucks fifty and all containers, seventy-five, with the only reduction being a twenty-five dollar drop for the containers. But those points were apparently the easy ones as the biggest quarrel was over the parking fees for importers. According to chief executive officer of the Belize Chamber of Commerce, today they successfully argued that the new rates should be ten dollars for productive sector inputs like cement, steel, feed and fertilizer and twenty dollars for everything else. Herrera says G.O.B. has agreed that the productive sector needs special consideration.
Kevin Herrera, Chief Executive Officer, Belize Chamber of Commerce
“That sector needs to stay competitive so that in order to compete with importers coming in and also on the world market. As you know the world market is a tough market and they don’t really care whether you’re domestic costs are going up or not. Those prices are set by the larger players and we are certainly not one of the large players. So I think it was a good compromise. We were hoping to get it further down but in the give and take of negotiations that is what we ended up with.”
Janelle Chanona
“Mr. Herrera do you think this opens the doors for importers and truckers using the northern border to say look we’ve been paying fees all along we want them removed too because we are working under the same conditions?”
Kevin Herrera
“That would have to be something that is addressed if it comes up Janelle. We have not really discussed it yet but I don’t know. I can’t tell if it will come up, I really can’t.”
Janelle Chanona
“There is some concern that this way of bringing this discussion to the negotiation table is questionable in that you brought commercial traffic to a halt. Is this a good way of doing business?”
Kevin Herrera
“Conversely I think this way of implementing new fees goes against the grain of consultation and democracy. Hopefully in the future, government and these agencies, before they think about increasing the fees will come and have a discussion and we talk about it and they give their perspective and we give ours and hopefully we could come to an agreement before it gets down to this so I’m hoping this will be a lesson to all of us.”
The new fees at the Western Border will take effect on Monday.
