Belize signs mortgage agreement with Trinidad
In an effort to bolster Belize’s foreign exchange reserves and make capital available for housing projects, the Government of Belize secured over a thousand mortgages today with the Royal Merchant Bank and Finance Company Limited. The deal with the T & T bank is described by Minister of Economic Development Ralph Fonseca as “a win-win situation” for all involved. It allows the purchase of mortgages from the Development Finance Corporation and the Social Security Board and pumps 46 million dollars back into the economy for the construction of new homes. The mortgages will be placed in a trust which will make the notes available for purchase in U.S. currency on the Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaican stock exchanges. The Executive Director of the Royal Bank of Trinidad and Tobago Rodney Prasad says the partnership with Belize is significant, not only because it allows Belize to develop a secondary market for mortgages but because it utilizes a regional institution.
Rodney Prasad, Executive Dir., Royal Bank of T & T
“For me, Honorable Minister, the real significance of this transaction, has more fundamental importance which exceed the unique structure for the required financing or the access of Belize to the regional capital markets, important though those matters may be. The real significance, for my part, is that this transaction represents in a small but important way the positive response of a Caribbean based financial services group to the legitimate needs of a Caribbean country and of Caribbean peoples.”
Ralph Fonseca, Minister of Economic Development
“We’re ensuring that the government can keep its mandate to build ten thousand houses. And with the one hundred million dollar cooperation program with Taiwan, the Republic of China and now with the secondary market that you have worked so hard, along with our people, to create, providing another 46 million dollars, and in fact providing the space and the apparatus and means of turning over that 146 million dollars into 300 million dollars, if we want to, if we can build houses fast enough, put mortgages together properly, we are ensured the way forward to keep our mandate with the Belizean people to build ten thousand houses.”
In related news, Minister of Economic Development Ralph Fonseca left for Barbados this afternoon for discussions with the Caribbean Development Bank on the issue of banana exports. Minister Fonseca headed a delegation to Brussels, London and Washington D.C. for talks on the recent World Trade Organization decision which threatens the future of the Caribbean banana market in Europe. In Brussels, Minister Fonseca met with European Commission officials to discuss the position of Belize and other small economies and the need for economic cooperation. In Washington D.C. meetings were held with the State Department and U.S. Department of Agriculture to establish a negotiating mechanism including all parties to resolve the banana dispute. Accompanying Fonseca was Banana Growers Association General Manager Zaid Flores, Foreign Affairs Officer Jose Alpuche and TIPS Chairman Louis Zabaneh.
