And switching back to our conversation with the Minister of Education and Culture, we wondered why he didn't speak much and only made on Facebook post during the big music industry debate coming out of the announcement of the Belize International Music and food festival.
It seems when it comes to music, Fonseca has been laying low allowing his Cabinet colleague Anthony Mahler to be more of an advocate for musicians.
We asked him about it today and he said that while he may not have been extremely vocal he's very much at the front and centre of every conversation around Belize's musical artists.
Reporter
"Sir, but there was controversy around that, because it's not all artist that were hired, in fact its small sampling of them. What happens to the rest, they suffered through covid too and the Prime Minister has said that Minister Mahler has put forward all these incentives to be considered for musicians, but the question is what are you doing?"
Hon. Francis Fonseca, Minister of Education, Culture
"We've been at the forefront of that discussion. NICH has been engaged in discussions with the Ministry of Finance, I have personally met with the Development Finance Corporation talking about opening a special window for artist. Never before existed, a special loan window at low interest cost. Those are things we are doing, because we understand artists have great difficulty in accessing capital and accessing financing. That is one of the things that disappointed me with the discussion about the trade license bill that people lost sight of the fact that one of the objectives of that bill was to bring artist into the formal economy. The big problem for them is accessing capital and they go to the banks, the banks say what kind of legal status do you have, what do you have to show and the trade license bill was about that addressing that issue. So, we are working very closely with our artistic community. Over the next few weeks, the Bliss Center for Performing Arts will be alive. I encourage you to talk to Miss Kim Vasquez. We are our artists, we are engaged with them, we are promoting projects for them. We have dance, we restored the art gallery up at the Bliss Center for Performing Arts - we are doing a lot of work in that regard, because unfortunately what we found when we took office was a broken-down Bliss, the Museum of Belize was dilapidated. We had to spend money to address those issues, but certainly the issue of engaging our artistic community is of national priority for us and we are working on that."
Fonseca says that his proposal to DFC is that the loans be granted at a 3% r. No word yet on whether that will indeed be the case.
