New Passport Machine for Belize will Cost US$10 Million

John Briceño

On Friday, government introduced a motion to allocate funds for the purchase of a new passport system.  The existing machine is outdated and is in dire need of replacement.  That’s what Prime Minister John Briceño said when he presented the proposal in the House of Representatives.  The new passport system which will come equipped with blank passports, complete with a machine readable microchip, will cost a pretty penny.  Ten million U.S. dollars over the life of his administration.

Prime Minister John Briceño

“The present passport system that the U.D.P. left us with is obsolete.  It’s falling apart, there is no part for it, there is no servicing for it.  The cameras are not working, they are telling us that sometimes you have to take five or six pictures for it to be able to get one good picture.  Our citizens living in the United States and living in the UK in other areas, they can no longer apply for a passport, they have to come all the way to Belize simply because the U.D.P. government was not prepared to do what is right which was to upgrade the passport system.  Now we have to be using this money to upgrade a passport system that is absolutely necessary for us to do.  We can’t hold it back any longer.  And it’s going to be a modern system.  It’s going to be expensive no hell.  It’s going to cost about ten million U.S. dollars over the next five years and it’s going to cost that much also because it will include the blank passports that we will be getting.”