Departure tax increased at PGIA

If you’ve traveled to the states or around the region recently you would have noticed that the departure tax at most foreign airports is far higher than that prevailing at home. No longer. Citing increased costs for improved infrastructure, the Belize Airports Authority today announced that the departure tax at the Philip Goldson International Airport, long pegged at twenty dollars, would be taking a hefty leap to thirty. The effective date of the increase is August first, and when coupled with the two-fifty security screening fee, Belizeans will pay thirty-two fifty to get out. Foreign visitors pay an additional seven dollar and fifty cent fee to fund PACT, the Protected Areas Conservation Trust. According to a BAA release, leaving Belize is still a bargain with taxes at Miami totaling eighty dollars, Guatemala City sixty and San Salvador fifty-four. Kingston, Jamaica also stands at fifty-four Belize dollars. One of the higher costs not cited by the BAA in its press release was the nearly one million dollars it has been ordered to pay as the result of a successful lawsuit by the operators of Lauren Duty Free. In that case the Sylvestre family was found to have been unfairly evicted from their leased premises in the PGIA arrivals hall.