High Court Determines that Sections of Sugar Industry Act are Unconstitutional

The Belize Sugar Industries Limited is partly successful in challenging the existing Sugar Industry Act.  That piece of law which governs the large-scale production of sugar in northern Belize is archaic and a formal objection before the High Court has proven that there are sections of the Sugar Industry Act that are unconstitutional.  A claim brought by B.S.I. and Russel Navarro sought, “declarations that certain provisions of the act that regulate their private contractual interests are null and void because the provisions are discriminatory and violate their constitutional rights to equal protection, to work and to free association”.  Senior Counsel Godfrey Smith represented both claimants and sat down with the media this afternoon to discuss the outcome of that matter.

Godfrey Smith

Godfrey Smith SC, Attorney-at-law

“Basically, BSI challenged several aspects of the Sugar Industry Act as being unconstitutional.  It didn’t succeed on all, but it succeeded on the meat of the matter which was that the Sugar Industry Control Board which is at the heart of the sugar industry, that its ability to demand of BSI, that it pay an annual levy of about fifty percent of its expenses which amounts to something, don’t hold me to these figures, but it fluctuates around a million dollars annually for the operation of the Sugar Industry Control Board and its agencies, that that levy, that imposition is unconstitutional.  Why?  I think it’s important to understand that BSI, obviously, is a private entity, a private corporation.  I think the other point that is not as easily grasped is that the cane farmers association is also private, in the sense that, at the end of the day when they are paid their monies, it goes into the pockets of cane farmers, as it should.  But I make the point to say that none of it goes into any consolidated revenue fund or any fund for wider public interest.  So you’re dealing with two private entities and this is the only scenario in Belize in which the state, the government intervenes and tries to regulate to such an extreme extent.”