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Portico and its project Port of Magical Belize - you can hear about it every night on the news, and in the commercial breaks. But who you don't hear about is Waterloo Investment Holding - and their rejected cruise port and cargo expansion project at the Port of Belize Ltd. That would have seen the expansion of Port's cargo facilities and the creation of a cruise port with berthing facilities for large cruise ships.
That project was famously rejected twice by NEAC. But while they were getting rejected - the Port of Magical Belize was getting every kind of green light there is.
Today, Waterloo's environmental consultant, the Piedroba Consulting group held a press conference at the Radisson to say and to prove they were wronged:
Jelle Prins, Piedroba Consulting Group
"The cards were always stacked against us. We were never going to get our approval. So we sit here in front of you to talk about the irrationality of that process. How could one project get its approval? Where as another one that represents the existing Port of Belize that would offer a key piece of national infrastructure to Belize and its people was being denied and discriminated against."
Luis Prieto Y Munoz, Piedroba Consulting Group
"Approving the Port of Magical Belize Project on the basis of this comparison table we gave you and not approving the Port of Belize, as Jelle said, is irrational, but it's now explainable. Now that these leaks have taken place that we understand some of the currents and some of the elements that were stacked against this project, it justified it explains why the actions that took place have taken place."
"So we spared no expense in developing this project and developing this plan, as evidenced by this enormous volume of studies and information that we produce over the course of five years. And the point that we're simply making is our competitors were not asked to do the same, yet they were afforded a simple path toward approval. And despite all of the down current benefits that we've provided, despite all of the studies that we did, and despite every hoop that we hopped through, we have been stymied at every point."
"We believe that the there was a deliberate and conscious effort by the government of Belize that we now have seen codified by this definitive agreement, that this has been along the entirety for us, that this has been a part of this approval process for us, and that it is for that reason that we've been denied and that we absolutely believe that this jeopardizes foreign investment."
Jelle Prins, Piedroba Consulting Group
"And the fair and due process would have guided this, Port of Belize would have been approved and we would be building a port for the nation of Belize."
