PM Barrow Says Waterloo Interested in Port Loyola Cruise Port

Dean Barrow

Much cruise port speculation has been making the rounds after representatives of G.O.B. met with interested party Waterloo last week. Initial reports, unofficial, indicated that Ashcroft affiliated Waterloo was not interested in revisiting the construction of a cruise port at the site of the ill-fated and abandoned Carnival project. But today, the PM dispelled those rumors, verifying that indeed Waterloo is very much interested, and so is government in facilitating them.

Prime Minister Dean Barrow

“I’ve just seen a letter this morning from the other people we’ve talked about, Hertzal asking to come to Belize to talk about the same thing. The difference between Hertzal and Waterloo is basically that Waterloo owns the land via the receivership. Hertzal would have to presumably purchase the land from Waterloo or from the receivership. And the thing is that Waterloo people, PIL, has indicated that they have every interest in pursuing the possibility of doing to port. So while there is…yes…they want to do two things. They want to do sort of buck …expand where they are so that they can do more bulk cargo and they want to do the actually cruise facility and it’s not the question of never the twain shall meet. I gather that that’s perfectly in order; it happens in other areas. So the only thing is the question of silting and how much dredging must be done. But it appears that since that place was originally dredged, there hasn’t been much silting up that’s taken place. So while Waterloo must get the right experts to be able to advice properly, preliminarily it does seem as though it is absolutely likely that the project will prove feasible and if that is so, then we believe Waterloo would be happy to proceed.”