Agreements Being Signed in Mexico to Diversity Belizean Agriculture

The Minister of Agriculture was recently in Mexico along with a delegation of government officials, including Prime Minister John Briceno. We have told you about the discussions Prime Minister Briceno had with leader in Mexico about a possible railroad into Belize, and the construction of a bridge linking San Pedro to Mexico. And while the Prime Minister was having those conversations, Minister of Agriculture Abelardo Mai was meeting with research institutions in Mexico.  Technical support agreements were being drafted for the development of a coconut and sour sop industry in Belize. Today Minister Mai travelled back to Mexico to sign those agreements.

Abelardo Mai

Abelardo Mai, Minister of Agriculture

“This was a follow up to our first bilateral meeting in July when we met with the Minister of Agriculture and his technical team. We laid out in that meeting what was our intention from an agriculture perspective, building trade, exporting to Mexico, building tariff barriers, and technical cooperation. This meeting I had was to get an update on where we are with our request to the Mexican government. They updated us and told us that the technical cooperation agreements were being drafted at the time between CICY, which is Centro Investigacion de Yucatan, INIFAP which is Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Forestales, Agrícolas, y Pecuarias, and then with BAHA from Belize and with our research institution in Belize, in Central Farm. Those have been in drafting, today they are finalized. And, as such we will be traveling to Merida today, to sign those agreements. The agreements will be signed by our research people which are Miss Enah Sanchez, which is Director of Research in Central Farm, and our fruit tree agronomist, Fay Garnett. Both of them are travelling with us to sign with CICY. CICY does a lot of research with coconut. As you know our government is looking to diversifying the agriculture sector. Coconut is one of the commodities that we have chosen.”