The Prime Minister still won't confirm whether BTL is acquiring his family owned company, Speednet.
But if the acquisition does happen, then Belize's telecommunications sector would be a monopoly, like the water and electricity sectors.
Here's what the PM said today while talking very generally about the utility sector - while saying very little about the possible acquisition of Speednet and a trio of cable companies which could cost BTL 200 million dollars.
John Briceno, Prime Minister
"That has not come to us yet, if anything is happening they're doing their negotiations and when that happens, when the negotiations are done, they report to us. As I said, whatever decisions BTL would do, it has to be in the best interest of Belize, the company and Belize. Monopolies, listen in the great United States, they have over 300 million plus citizens, we have 400,000. They only have 3 phone companies and they're heavily regulated by the FTC."
"And likewise here we have the PUC. They regulate and they will set prices, they will not allow any company to be able to just raise prices just because they want to raise it. They have to make a case. For instance BEL, after 5 years they finally came to ask for a raise, and even when they did that they went through a tedious process to be able to approve it. BWSL, the same thing, a tedious process. If we want to expand water into the rest of the country and in small communities, areas where it's not necessarily feasible, we have to give water to our citizens, somebody has to pay for it. That is why they're investing 130 million dollars in expansion. I just met with BWSL earlier this week. We're looking at doing a water a sewage plant expansion in San Pedro. We need to do something urgently in San Pedro because if we don't, in the next ten to fifteen years, San Pedro will not be the San Pedro we know. So that's over 200 million US for us to do. We have to work on that to see how we can get the funding."
