Bagasse negotiation begin in earnest

Alfredo Ortega

Today, the Belize Sugar Cane Farmer Association and Belize Sugar Industries met in Orange Walk Town for the first round of intensive discussions on the new sugar-cane purchasing agreement, of which the most pressing is the quantum of payment for bagasse. It was not expected that all negotiations would be concluded today, and it wasn’t. But there was progress made. Late this evening Vice-Chairman of the Committee of Management of the B.S.C.F.A., Alfredo Ortega, told us that all things considered, today’s session was a positive sign for further negotiations.

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Via Phone: Alfredo Ortega, Vice-Chairman, Committee of Management, BSCFA

“We went through with the agreement—with things we already agreed on before and things that we had left for a further date. And we went through it. We agreed on certain things and we also did our presentation with regards to our proposal on bagasse. B.S.I. will be presented at the next meeting we will be holding with them on the sixth of March.”

Mike Rudon

“Could you give us an idea of how… I know you all had asked for ten dollars. Could you give us an idea of how that was received and how far the negotiations to that end have gone?”

Via Phone: Alfredo Ortega

“Well we did our presentation today based on the ten dollars that we proposed to them. We will be waiting on their presentation that they will be doing on the sixth of March to see what is their counter proposals. From there after we will pick up from there. We went through the norms; we are going on regards of quality and some appendices that will cover the payment for sugar cane and molasses. At this point, which will include whenever we finalize the agreement for bagasse…that will be included within those sections. So those are the major sections which we agreed upon and the rest that stayed are not so much but we need further clarification on those. I think that we went through with the different sections within the agreement. I think that both of us coincide in certain areas that we agreed to mutually and other things we left for a further date that both parties will be looking upon and send it to a back and forth until we reach to a point where we can agree. I think that it was a good atmosphere today since it was our first engagement to continue our negotiation on the quantum of bagasse.”

The next meeting is set for March sixth in Orange Walk.