And as Usher mentioned, the damage to Belize’s $30 million a year papaya industry is considerable. So how bad was the industry hit? Well try 100%. Jose Castellanos of the Ministry of Agriculture says Hurricane Dean destroyed all of the north’s papaya crop.
Jose Castellanos, Ministry of Agriculture
“What we saw yesterday in the area surveyed, what we saw was almost 100% of the papaya industry destroyed. That is an industry that we export on an annual basis about $30 million, in terms of foreign exchange earnings. We suspect that at a minimal time, it takes about two years to get to where we were before Hurricane Dean; that is a macro impact. But also in terms of the investment required to bring us back to where we were, we suspect it will take about $23 million for the investors and the farmers to get back to where they were before.”
And speaking of economic impact, NEMO says that three thousand tourists left San Pedro and Caye Caulker because of the threat from Hurricane Dean.