Last night, we told you about Monday's meeting between Prime Minister John Briceno and his team and the management of Belize Sugar Industries Limited and majority shareholder, American Sugar Refining. The PM and his team are trying to broach a resolution to the commercial dispute between the mill and the Belize Sugar Cane Farmers Association.
Today, representatives of BSI/ASR hosted a press conference to answer questions from the media on those talks, and what they're doing to end the impasse over the rapidly expiring commercial agreement.
Today, ASR's "Mac" McLachlan told us via Zoom that they are not prepared to extend that contract. Here's his rationale for why doing so would amount to delaying and postponing a resolution:
Malcolm "Mac" McLachlan - VP, International Relations, ASR/BSI
"The BSCFA has made a proposal for some fairly radical changes to the way to the way the cane payment formally works. The government has asked us and BSCFA to consider a way forward and also to ensure that the crop can take place, that there won't be any interruptions to the crop. So, we were able to meet with the Prime Minister on Monday, to explain that we've looked at what's being proposed and that we are prepared to have a discussion with BSCFA, based on their concept. But - and I don't want to get into too much detail because we've reached out for that meeting next week, and it wouldn't be right to give too many details of what we're looking at. But, I think we may have found a way to do 2 things really. One of them is to look at a new approach to the formula, looking at the way BSCFA presented that, to do away with a lot of the conjecture and the false accusations that have been leveled at this mill, overall the time I've been working here in the last 8 years, concerning how much [is] deducted from cane farmers for logistics, freight and the manufacturing of higher value sugars."
"We're not prepared to extend the existing agreement which expires on the 19th of January for 2 main reasons. 1 is, I don't think it's necessary. I think we'll be in a stronger position to agree on a new agreement before that time. We're committed to actively working on that, so I don't think it's necessary. But secondly, we've lived through this before in Belize. In 2014, we had an extended - or I think a 1-year agreement at the time. It didn't resolve anything. All it meant was there was really no progress during that period, and as soon as it was over, then the whole disagreement kind of continued."
