By now gas the complaint of soaring gas prices is more of a national lament than it is news.
It's a reality that's affecting the bottom line of every business sector including the one, that is the bedrock fo the economy: tourism.
Now, a government subsidy to somewhat ease that burden, at least for tour operators, is on its way.
Eligible tour operators will be beneficiaries of a capped fuel subsidy jointly funded by the Government of Belize and the Belize Tourism Board in the sum of $1.5 million for a period of up to six months.
Here's what the BTB's director of quality management and capacity development told us about accessing the much-needed funds.
Abil Castaneda, Director of Quality Management and Capacity Development
"What we are doing right now and in fact, I wanted to thank you for the opportunity, we are making a call out to all our licensed tour operators to submit their applications. The application is there so that we can understand what their level of fuel consumption is in the past and also to look at some projections for the future so that we can finalize in reality a formula that we can use to provide the subsidy in a very equitable manner. The initial thought process was we would give everyone a cap, however, every tour operator unlike other sectors they have different use of fuel you know are some that are in the marine area, some that are terrestrial, some that do tours all the way to Xunantunich some that only do tours in Altun Ha so we have to be very, in terms, considerate of all those elements and that is why we are making this call for all licensed tour operators to kindly submit their application. Our application can be found on our Facebook page, they can also call the BTB at 227-2420 or they can e-mail the tour operator at Belize tourism board.org so that we can get them the link and they can provide us with the information. We had started this application process about a week and a half ago or two weeks and we have not gotten all of our licensed tour operators, we know that some of them may not be at this time may be operating but we do want as much of them to come in. We are also extending this particular process to tender operators, so those operators that bring our cruise visitors off the ships onto the mainland, we are also extending it to them because, in reality, the objective of all of this is to try to soften the blow in terms of the increase in fuel prices that we are seeing across the board and so like I believe the transportation is putting together a similar program we are doing so for our tour operator sector which is one of you know the bedrocks of how tourism operates and is able to input into the economy."
