Foreign Company Controls Majority Shares of National Has Company

Audrey Matura

Matura also raised questions about the owners of the National Gas Company. The company is a Public-Private Partnership with the Government of Belize holding twenty-five percent of shares. The list of shareholders includes a U.S. based company called B.W.T. holdings while the locals are M & M Limited, G.A. Roe, Gilly Canton, and Bowen and Bowen. B.W.T. Holdings owns the largest bulk of shares in the company and according to Matura, that hardly makes is Belizean owned. 

Audrey Matura, Attorney for LPG Importers

“Who owns it? A company name Innovative Energy Belize Limited. That is at Northern Shops in Belize. They own two thousand four hundred of the shares. BWT Holdings LLP which their address is at one-sixty-four Industrial Parkway Jackson Minnesota, U.S.A. they own seven thousand eight hundred shares. They have the maximum, the larger amount. Then M and M Limited of Sittee Street owns one thousand two hundred. GA Roe and Sons the insurance of Coney Drive owns one thousand two hundred. BELCO of miles sixty-three of George Price Highway owns thousand two hundred. Bowen and Bowen Limited owns one thousand two hundred and then the Government of Belize owns five thousand shares. So who owns the majority or the largest amount of shares? A foreign company. So it is hypocritical for the Prime Minister and his subsequent ministers and senators to stand up in the National Assembly and tell the Belizean people that we need to get rid of those companies and stop them from importing because they are foreign owned and then turn around and the so-called National Gas Company, the largest amount of shares you give it to a foreigner—a foreigner we know nothing about.”