Senator Salas also discussed another hot topic the proposed Port of Magical Belize. It's one of three proposed cruise ports for the country and would be located 6km south of the Sibun River in the Belize District. Salas said the BNN also does not have official position as yet, but the government has a lot of decisions to make before sanctioning the proposed ports.
Osmany Salas - Senator "The BNN per se does not have a position but groups of our members have positions on the matter and there is a real concern that Belize needs to make up its mind. Basically, what kind of destination do we want to make ourselves. As a result of the pandemic, how do we intend to make up the industry. We know that cruise has taken a huge hit maybe even difficult for cruise to recover when compared to overnight tourism so there are a lot of questions left. I think with three separate proposed cruise developments, serious decisions need to made on the one that will potentially dumb so many millions of cubic meters of spoil in our sea and there's no way we can support something like that and risk for the delisting of our world heritage site again. Because when our Belize barrier reef system was declared an area at risk and it was considered as such under the world heritage site, it took us 9 years to be removed from that site, so easy to get back on it. So, we have to be very careful with the type of development we want to push forward."
