Government Outlines Plans to Modernize Port of Belize for Cargo and Cruise

After spending some 190 million dollars to acquire the Port of Belize Limited, the government is now looking at enhancing the facility.  According to PM Briceno, the idea is to transform the area into a modernized port.   He says currently there are plans to facilitate both cargo and a cruise port.

John Briceño, Prime Minister of Belize: “The Port of Belize I said it in my speech and also Daniel Gutierrez gave a full presentation on it. I think it’s an exciting project. We know that we had a history with the Port of Belize and the previous group that had it under receivership they are not investing. They were taking out monies to supposedly pay loans and that’s another matter. We felt that we were being held hostage because they did not get their ESIA approval and so we felt that no investments were being done so we felt that the best thing is to be able to negotiate. Unlike what the previous government did to just strong arm things and you end up paying a lot more we negotiated and we negotiated hard and we bought the port we paid about $190 million. Once we got that then we said we need to modernize it, we need a cruise port. As they pointed out the container port equipment is more than fifty years old, that has outlived and so we need to modernize it. So what we’ve been doing since then we made a study, we took it to Cabinet everything was decided by the Cabinet. I presented a paper to Cabinet as to what position do we want to do only a container port ? Only a cruise port or both of them and the Cabinet said in their wisdom that we need to do both and so now we come up with an estimate. It is estimated around $140 million US dollars and then after that we work on a master plan that was presented to Cabinet. Cabinet has accepted the master plan. We started to meet with potential investors like SSA Marine from Blackrock, the company that is owned by Blackrock in the United States. We have Global Ports Holding from Turkey. Both of these companies have been building ports not only in the US but also in the region and internationally so these are bonafide investors that are coming.”

Love News understands that there is a comprehensive plan to build a 580-meter modern cargo wharf, complete with advanced equipment and the country’s first onshore cruise facility.