PM Barrow speaks to EU ban on imports of fishery to Belize

Dean Barrow

The European Union is clustering Belize with Cambodia and Guinea as countries that have not done much to stamp our illegal fishing. On Tuesday, the EU announced a ban on fish imports from the three countries. The government that since it took over the registry it has moved quickly to rectify the deficiencies, including the strengthening of the High Seas Fishing Act. The prime minister addressed this issue at the press conference.

Dean Barrow, Prime Minister

“The government needs to do more in terms of the fishing fleet that flag locally flagged foreign fishing fleet and there is correspondence moving back and forth and we are glad that there is regulations that must be passed under the act that we have now made a law. Can be done fairly quickly and the monitoring put in place. So you don’t expect that there will be too much time passing before we are able to clear this situation completely. And I have made the point that if we have not taken over the fleet this is why in fact we were already getting into trouble. So it underscores the point that it was in the national interest to do what we did.”