Belize Reaffirms Established Partnership with E.U.

The Government of Belize has reaffirmed a longstanding partnership with the European Union with the signing of a Green Growth, Trade, and Border Management Program.  The initiative will funded by the E.U. as part of a financing agreement for twelve point six million Euros, the equivalent twenty-seven million Belize dollars.  Present at today’s signing was Marianne van Steen, EU Ambassador to Belize.

Marianne van Steen

Marianne van Steen, E.U. Ambassador to Belize

“Today was an important day because we signed a document which is actually the result of hard work from my team here, I have a team in Belmopan, but also the team from the government and many, many people who were involved to kind of look at what are the main areas in which the European Union can continue to provide support to Belize’s development plans.  So we signed a document today where we actually confirmed our willingness to address a number of areas with a sum of 12.6 million Euros, I’ve just made the calculation, that must be about a little bit more than twenty-seven million Belize dollars.  That is not our entire package of support to the country, I have to make that clear, but it’s an important part of our bilateral envelope.  And I am saying thanks to everyone who contributed to that because it’s been a very consultative process.  It’s not like we come here and we say want to help with one, two, three.  We actually talk, both with the government and civil society, and we’ve come up with a couple of very important initiatives for the country.  You will be interested to know which ones they are.  The first one is, it’s not hard to see and everyone knows, we’ve agreed that the main priority, the main needs in this country is the south.  I mean, the south really needs an extra push.  It needs help with its local development plans, it needs help with micro-credits.  It needs help for, let’s say, the most vulnerable participants in society, the women, the children, to get that extra push in order to allow them the possibility to participate more in society and to create livelihoods for them.”