Yesterday we told you that 20 million US dollars from the Millennium Corporation Challenge Belize Compact was being reallocated to the energy sector. Initially, only 20% of the funds were allocated for that sector, and the other 80% for the education sector. However, GOB has been in negotiations with the US government since the change in administration, and the Prime Minister explained last year that US government wanted to invest more of those funds into energy. Well, on Tuesday, Cabinet approved the latest proposal.
The Minister of Energy explained via Zoom what the money will be used for.
Michel Chebat, Minister of Energy
"There was some reallocation of funds so that now about $41 million US or so is being allocated for the energy projects and included in those, we have settled upon several things, some of those funds are going to be use to procure selected hardware that are going to be deployed at the hydros to make them more efficient and more reliable. Some funds are also going to be used to procure and also to build some of the interconnection points for the new generation capacity that we are gonna be getting shortly. As you are aware, there's currently an RFQ out for 80 megawatts of solar energy and some of the funds in addition is gonna be used for capacity building within the ministry. We're going to use some funds to also draft a new energy act under which we're thinking we're going to subsume the current electricity act and make it a little bit more modern and pertinent to all the new sources of energy that we're going to be getting from. And I believe a portion of the funds will also be used to create the grid codes, the distribution grid codes which are needed so that anybody who wants to interact with BEL will know what are the standards required by BEL and would be able to match those so that there's symmetry between systems. So that's pretty much what the funds will be used for."
"My understanding initially was that they were looking more at renewable energy sources but that has been brought in a little bit so that it's no longer exclusively for renewable energy sources."
