Yesterday we told you about the signing of the second compact agreement between Belize and the Millennium Challenge Corporation, a US foreign aid agency. In this first phase, Belize will be receiving US 10 million dollars which will be used to improve the education and energy sectors, in hopes of growing the economy.
At a press conference last night, the prime minister explained why he believes it is important for our energy sector to be independent of Mexico.
John Briceno, Prime Minister
"44% of our energy is being imported from Mexico, Mexico have their own problems with energy. We have to start thinking about the future, what if one year, four years, five years from now, Mexico thinks, I don't have enough energy to provide to their country, who do you think they're going to cut? They're going to cut off Cancun or their going to cut off Belize? They're going to cut Belize so we have to start to do the proper studies to ensure, how is it that we could address this eventuality, how is it that we can produce even more renewable sources of energy? We have a lot of sun, how can we take advantage of that? Now we ask all these questions but we need to be able to have the technical expertise, the technical knowledge the know how, and coming up with plans to take us to where we want to be."
And the representative from MCC as well as the CEO in the Economic Development Ministry explained that reducing the price of wholesale electricity will ultimately result in a reduced cost in retail prices. But first, studies will have to be conducted to see how this goal can be achieved.
Jonathan Brooks, Deputy VP, EAPLA, MCC
"Our interest in the electricity sector is at this moment to lower the wholesale price of electricity with an understanding that that's where we need to start in order to be able to ultimately reduce the price of retail and inputs across the economy. This is a program that's still in design but one of the things that we are looking at is ensuring that the processes for acquiring electricity by Belize are done according to best practices in terms of how those procurements are done in the market. Those require a level of technical support for the different entities in the sector, the PUC, BEL, others that are involved in that process. And so part of our approach will be to better understand in Belize what that sector does in order to procure electric and we plan to provide some support in that regard."
Osmond Martinez, CEO, Ministry of Economic Development
"There are many things that we are doing in parallel. One is through the MCC grant, we are planning to use 80% of the ten million towards the education sector and 20% towards the energy sector. And with that 20%, we have engaged along with Minister Coye, I have seemed advisory from the World Bank to conduct some studies, they are already working on doing the project preparation facility, the PPF and that was also another grant from GIF which is the
Global Infrastructure Facility in combination with some grant from MCC, that will help us to first do the study of the grid, look at the gap analysis, and then we will be able to move forward but in addition to that, there is also some studies that will be done for PPA's, purchasing power agreements, and PPE's, public private partnerships, so based on the studies and the research that will be conducted, we will be in a better position to answer those questions."
