New policies planned for yachts, private aircraft

In other news from Cabinet, that body has taken a number of policy decisions. Among them are initiatives to better regulate the growing yacht charter industry and promote tourism by private aircraft. The idea is to make entry procedures for private planes more efficient, while at the same time maintaining necessary security measures at the Philip Goldson International Airport. Cabinet also agreed to lower the cost of road service permits for bus operators and approved a fifteen-year development concession for BELCOGEN. BELCOGEN is the company, owned primarily by Belize Sugar Industries, that will set up a plant to create energy from the burning of bagasse, a waste product of sugar manufacturing. They aim to provide some twenty percent of the nation’s electricity needs by 2008.

In related news, Cabinet was briefed on decisions taken by the European Union that will reduce prices paid for sugar sold to E.U. member states by thirty-nine percent over four years. At current production levels, those cuts will cost Belize just under three million dollars in 2006/2007, rising to over twenty-one million dollars in 2009/2010.