Prime Minister Briceno Hands Over SICA Presidency, Urges Action on Climate Change

Prime Minister John Briceno handed over the presidency of the Central America Integration System (SICA) to El Salvador as part of the organization’s 57th Summit of the Heads of Government.  The opening session of the summit got underway this morning in Placencia where Prime Minister Briceno spoke on the urgency of addressing climate change as a region.  He also spoke on the need for continued collaboration as a region on trade and economics.  Love News spoke with the Prime Minister on today’s event.

Hon. John Briceño, Prime Minister of Belize: “Basically what we are doing today is officially handing over  the SICA pro-tempore presidency to Vice President Ulloa from El Salvador. President Bukele had all plans to come to Belize but unfortunately on Sunday something came up and so the Vice President is here. Belize had a very active six months of business presidency and speaking on the recurring theme of climate change, migration and food security. So I want to thank Foreign Minister Eamon Courtenay and of course his entire team for the great job that they did and we also wish all the best to the El Salvador and as I promised the Vice President that Belize will do everything to ensure that they could also have a successful six months ahead. I want to thank everybody that has been making this event very successful. Yesterday Minister Courtenay had a meeting with both CARICOM and SICA foreign ministers, now the CARICOM foreign ministers well now they have left today we are wrapping up our term as the pro-tempore president of SICA. So on behalf of everyone we thank both the SICA secretariat and everybody that worked for us to have a very successful presidency.”

As we reported yesterday, there was a joint meeting of SICA and CARICOM with Belize being the common denominator in both sub-regions.  According to Prime Minister Briceno, the member countries of both organizations would benefit tremendously if they would come together to collaborate in certain sectors.

Hon. John Briceño, Prime Minister of Belize: “$400 billion in the economy and about 50 plus million people in the both regions. We believe that if we can work as two regions closer we can have a stronger voice in the international forum and can represent our peoples better to ensure that we can bring even more opportunities for both regions.”

The meetings were hosted at the Umaya Resort in Placencia.