And with the Belize Investment Summit coming up, that may also be good news for the economy. The summit is being organized by the government to attract foreign investment and is scheduled for November 10th and 11th in San Pedro. When the PM told us about it today, he noted that there has been a lot of international interest, especially amongst Central American nations. He spoke about his most recent trip to Mexico and one of the biggest projects discussed was a road connecting northern Ambergris Caye to the Mexican peninsula - that's right, in the future, you may be able to drive from San Pedro Town to Cancun.
Hon. John Briceno, Prime Minister
"In the investment summit, we are making it international and certainly we are getting a lot of interest from Belizeans here in Belize but we're getting a lot of interest from the United States but now we're getting interest from Guatemala and Mexico in Central America and that is simply because now we have been active in the region, we've been going to SICA meeting both myself as head of state and Eamon Courtenay as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, we went to Mexico, we've had a series of meeting in Mexico when I was there for about a week, we met with Compramex which is probably one of the largest public sector organizations and they are expressing interest to come and look. When we made note that we were interested to see how we could connect to the Tren Maya and to see initially to get it to the border of Belize and eventually to see if we could get it into the country, obviously it has to be a private/public sector partnership, again that generated interest in Mexico. We have a number of issues or ideas that we're looking at, we're trying to see how we could connect Ambergris Caye to the Mahahual area, to the peninsula. It's just we have an opening of a canal of about 40 feet, and we believe if we can put a bridge there then that means the Rivera Maya would start In Cancun and end in San Pedro and when we said that to the media in Mexico, that excited them because you'd pay well to drive from Cancun to San Pedro and vice versa and it would open up that market so there are so many things that we're doing and people are very excited about the investment summit and looking at the opportunities that Belize can offer them."
And with the Stake Bank Saga concerning the causeway, the question came up of whether a bridge connecting Ambergris Caye to Mexico would be environmentally viable. Here's how the PM answered.
Hon. John Briceno, Prime Minister
"There's this theory that San Pedro or Ambergris Caye was connected to the peninsula but there's this theory that the Mayans dug a Canal there, you could imagine paddling 20 plus miles to get to the tip and 20 plus miles to go up when you figure you could just cut a canal and so that I don't think will be an issue because you talk about 40 feet, I've not been there but I'm told it's about 40 feet of water that we have by putting a canal and then that would open up that whole area, the north Ambergris area, I mean in Cabinet we just appointed a north Ambergris developing committee that would try to look at having planned development in the northern part of Ambergris Caye."
