Prime Minister Dean Barrow, who returned from his semi-official visit to London on Wednesday, July 3, told a Belize newspaper this week that a London backer has expressed interest in investing in a deep water port in Belize, which could speed up the shipment of Belize’s exports, such as sugar, to the international market.
The Commerce Bight Port in Stann Creek, said Barrow, is a possible location for a new port.
Belize’s premier port, the Port of Belize, came under the control of Michael Ashcroft’s Private Investment Limited (PIL) after it fell into receivership last January.
While in London, Barrow visited a Tate & Lyle facility where he witnessed the offloading of Belizean sugar; however, he said that he was particularly struck by the fact that while it takes 3.5 weeks for Belize to get its sugar to ship; it takes a mere two days to offload from the ship there in London.
This expression of interest in port development in Belize, said Barrow, was one of the major outcomes of his London visit, and particularly the luncheon he attended with the private sector in the financial nerve center of the City of London. Those talks, he said, were intended to raise Belize’s international profile and to talk specifically about investment possibilities.
Prime Minister Barrow shrugged off claims from inside the camp of the Opposition People’s United Party that his trip to London had been arranged and bankrolled by British billionaire Michael Ashcroft, as “absolutely ridiculous.”
“These people! I wonder if they figure the more bizarre an allegation you make, the more play it will get?” Barrow responded, saying that his trip was primarily financed by the Government of Belize with support from the British Government, which financed his stay at the Royal Garden Hotel in Kensington.
Barrow did confirm, though, that he had a personal meeting with Mr. Ashcroft, and he told us that the two talked about the protracted legal disputes Ashcroft and the Barrow administration have been having.
“He heard that I was coming and asked for us to be able to talk about the developments in terms of the litigation and proposals for possible settlements—so we spoke,” Barrow told us.
Despite the London chat, Ashcroft and the Barrow administration remain at loggerheads in a tangle of litigation. Barrow said that a prime consideration in their discussions is the fact that a decision of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) on the settlement deed, which the Musa administration had signed with the Ashcroft group, is due in September. The Ashcroft group won the first leg in the Supreme Court, but the Government of Belize won in the Court of Appeal.
“If he [Ashcroft] wins, then I will have no choice at that juncture but to pay and there is a question of the Super-bond 2,” said Barrow, adding that there is headroom in the 2013 bond for the issuance of an additional US$70 million worth of bonds.
On the more official front, Prime Minister Barrow, the first Belize official to visit London in more than a decade, also visited Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Charles.
“That’s basically a protocol thing,” he told us.
He described his meeting with Queen Elizabeth as “pleasant,” saying that they spoke of the Commonwealth and Belize.
Barrow announced that Prince Charles, who he said is “very big on environmental issues,” spoke of using Belize in a pilot project for “Blue Bonds” – a system similar to the application of carbon credits that would afford Belize financial assets for environmental conservation. The Blue Bonds are still in the concept stage, Barrow said, and talks on this front could expand when the Prince and his entourage visit the Hemisphere later this year.
The Prime Minister is also optimistic that support from British Army Training Support Unit Belize (BATSUB) could be bolstered after the British military withdraws from Afghanistan over the next 18 months.
Barrow had a personal meeting with British Minister of State for the Armed Forces, Andrew Robathan, who he said is “extremely keen on the idea” of boosting BATSUB presence in Belize.
“This is perhaps the matter of greatest substance,” said Barrow, in detailing the outcomes of his London trip.
Robathan had been in the army years ago, around the time of the Falklands War, and although he wanted to be deployed there, he was told that he had to stay in Belize, because the British were keeping an eye on Guatemala, Barrow conveyed to us.
The downsizing of BATSUB’s presence in Belize flowed from the UK’s Strategic Defense Review and budget cuts, and Barrow acknowledges that “there will have to be some kind of internal process” to get final approval.
Prime Minister Barrow was accompanied in London by his wife, Kim Simplis-Barrow, who held a fundraiser for the Belize Children’s Trust. Although the final figures were not presented, the Prime Minister said that the last he heard, the tally for funds raised was over 70,000 British pounds (about BZ$200,000), with pledges still pending.
As this was not an official visit Barrow was not received by the British PM or his top advisers.