And in new of where Foreign Affairs meets Education in Fonseca's mega portfolio, recently cabinet gave its approval to modifications in the $125 million US dollar grant funding from the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) Belize Compact.
At the behest of the the US government, they will reallocate 20 million that was supposed to be for education to an energy project.
We asked Fonseca how this would impact his plans for Education:
Francis Fonseca, Minister of Foreign Affairs
Yeah I mean obviously as the Minister of Education I was very happy with the original structure of the plan, the compact which saw about 80% of the funds going into education, 20% into energy, now it is about 60-40. You know a new administration came into the US and they wanted to review the MCC. As you know for a while we were in limbo we did not quite know whether or not the compact would continue any at all it was under review, we are very happy that we were able through discussions to get them to agree to continue with the program and in that process we had to make certain comprises and one of them was that we had to shift more funds into energy into the energy sector plan and less into education but
REPORTER:
Did they explain why they are placing less priority on education?
Francis Fonseca, Minister of Foreign Affairs
Just their priorities, their new priorities and we felt given the 60% investment in education it was still critically important and we wanted to proceed.
