Belize assumes presidency of Plan Puebla

The notion of Belize being both a Caribbean and Central American nation is a culturally fascinating proposition … but it sure makes our tiny diplomatic corps work overtime. What I’m referring to is our membership in both English speaking CARICOM and Spanish speaking SICA. This week it was Belize’s turn to take over the rotating presidency of yet another SICA institution, the Plan Puebla Panama. This regional initiative, which includes every mainland country from Mexico in the north to Colombia in the south, has seen more talk than action since its introduction in December of 2000 at the behest of then President-elect of Mexico Vicente Fox. According to Belize’s Plan Puebla representative, Foreign Affairs C.E.O., Amalia Mai, that situation maybe changing.

Amalia Mai, C.E.O., Min. of Foreign Affairs
“The whole concept of Plan Puebla is to work together with Central America on the big issues that we’re all talking about, which is indeed regional integration. One of the priorities of Plan Puebla as we were discussing this morning is because there is a new administration in Mexico. The new president and his administration feel that Plan Puebla needs to be revitalised, reenergised. And so Mexico has come to Belize and made some very substantive proposals as to how we can move forward prior to a meeting of the heads of government of Plan Puebla to be convened possibly in April in Mexico City. … So it’s a very good meeting, we met until very late last night, we’re continuing today and we hope that by the end of this session this morning we will have moved forward on the new Mexican initiatives.”

The central goal of Plan Puebla is poverty reduction with an emphasis on infrastructural development. Also attending this week’s meeting was the head of the Central American Bank of Integration and a representative of the Inter-American Development Bank.