Musa: we can be friends with both Venezuela and U.S.A.
He returned from Venezuela over the weekend, having signed on to a far reaching energy agreement with Venezuela plus a ten million U.S. dollar grant for government projects. Today, Prime Minister Said Musa offered details of the budding relationship’s progress … and problems.
Prime Minister Said Musa
“The whole purpose of this joint venture is first of all, for us to get petroleum products into Belize. Thanks to the government of Venezuela, this is a refined products where by we only pay at stage for sixty percent of it and forty percent is on credit for twenty-five years at one percent interest. That’s the first aspect of it. The second aspect is collaboration between a very experienced company, Pedervesa, which is the oil company of Venezuela, to assist us in developing our own local oil industry. As you know we have a small infantile oil industry—infant industry—producing about three thousand barrels a day and we of course need to do more exploration. We need to do more, we’re examining the possibility of a small, a small refinery or a topping up plant to produce diesel in Belize.”
“In addition the government of Venezuela under the same Petro Caribe initiative, is helping us from time to time with grant funds for poverty reduction measures.”
Marion Ali
“Now, how soon can we expect this deal to start to materialize and how will it affect our prices at the pumps?”
Prime Minister Said Musa
“Well the actual shipments have been delayed because of storage problem. The truth of the matter is we’ve had no end of difficulties with the multinational company that has been supplying Belize because they own the storage capacity and they didn’t want us to use their facilities to store the oil, but we’re hoping that that matter will be resolved quickly. I know it’s under discussion right now. The second thing is, we are, with the assistance of Venezuela, building our own tank farm. We’ll be setting up some storage facilities. Once those things are properly in place then I think you will see a lot of activity.”
Activity is also being recorded on the diplomatic front, with Venezuela playing a role that has traditionally been held by Taiwan. The question is: can Belize continue to have such an unusual assortment of friends?
Said Musa, Prime Minister
“I consider President Chavez a highly respected president of a country with which Belize has had relationship for many many years. Venezuela respects our sovereignty and our territorial integrity. Venezuela has given us full support when we were fighting for our independence, despite the fact that they had an ongoing problem with Guyana at the time, one of our colleagues in CARICOM; and we do enjoy a good relationship with President Chavez at the governmental level.”
Marion Ali
“Finally sir, are you concerned that the relationship between Belize and Venezuela might jeopardize our ties with the U.S.?”
Said Musa, Prime Minister
“Not at all. I don’t see why it should. Belize has enjoyed excellent relations with the United States of America. I should tell you that this matter came up in our discussion with President Bush when we had that summit in Washington and all the Caribbean leaders made it clear our position, just as we made it clear our position with Cuba. So in other words, as an independent country, we want to maintain close friendly relationships with all countries of the world, to the extent possible. And I don’t think that will be affected, the; our relationship with Venezuela in any way will affect our relationship with the United States, which happens to be our major trading partner for imports and exports.”
Musa says that the grant funds from Venezuela will be used on poverty reduction projects in the fields of housing, classroom construction, feeder roads, health and sports.
