PM Meets with B.S.C.F.A Representatives
Prime Minister John Briceño
And while the Briceño administration acquires the Port of Belize and restores it to Belizean ownership, today Prime Minister Briceño held a meeting with representatives of the Belize Sugar Cane Farmers Association. We know that there is still a stand-off between the association and the Belize Sugar Industries amid failure to sign a commercial agreement. Today the PM shed light as to what came out of that meeting.
Prime Minister John Briceño
“What the B.S.C.F.A did is that they hired Senior Counsel, Magali Marin to be able to look at the issues of fair trade. You know that has been an ongoing concern between the B.S.C.F.A and B.S.I. What Senior Counsel Marin did was to go through the different agreements and the regulations and point out where they believe that B.S.I has not been following up or living up to the agreement that they signed. So, the idea is that we’ve asked Senior Counsel[Marin] to prepare a letter to the Cabinet Sub-committee, along with a presentation, clearly pointing out where they believe that B.S.I has been not living up to the conditions for the payment of the fair trade. We hope to get it by Friday, and early next week, the expectation is that then the Cabinet Sub-committee is going to have a meeting with Mac [McClaughlin] and his officials to discuss it. I am hoping that by addressing that issue, then maybe we can be able to get maybe a two-year or maybe a three-year commercial agreement to allow us as a government to give time to have the Commission of Inquiry. The Commission of Inquiry is going to take us probably at least a year. But once we get that report, then we need to be able to study it and to see what can be applicable, how is it that we can improve the yields in our cane fields? how we can reduce the cost of delivery to B.S.I, to the factory, how B.S.I could improve its efficiencies, and also the delivery of the sugar from B.S.I on to the ship for it to be – we need to take a comprehensive look at what’s going on, and how we can improve efficiencies, and at the end of the day, that everybody can make more money.”
Reporter
“Okay, but that fair trade issue is not what’s holding up the signing of the commercial agreement, right? They want to make sure they’re getting a fair price for their cane.”
Prime Minister John Briceño
“Well, fair trade is only one part. What the idea is that if we could settle that, we could sign an interim agreement for three years. And then that will then be able to allow for everybody to look at the facts, look at the evidence that we can get from the Commission of Inquiry, and then from there decide what can be changed, what we can do to be able to improve to make it better for everyone. And it’s not a matter of that taking away from the farmers or taking away from B.S.I, but how is it that we can improve our efficiencies and how we can improve the revenues for everybody.”
