We also asked Mahler - who has responsibility for border management about Cabinet's decision to reopen land borders. As we told you last night, Cabinet has approved the re-opening of land borders for January 1st, 2022, New Year's Day.
The Government also made it clear that although Belizeans will be allowed to cross the border legally, there are certain health conditions that will apply. When we asked Mahler about what those could be, he said that at this time, Cabinet is considering allowing only those Belizeans who have been vaccinated. Here's his explanation of the rationale:
Hon. Anthony Mahler - Minister of Tourism & Diaspora Relations
"In cabinet we decided that once you're going for less than 24 hours you don't have to test coming back in but we're looking at seriously having only people who are fully vaccinated to go in and out."
Reporter
"So what about testing some days later, I think I saw that suggestion on social media because it is very possible that people might go across, get it and come back but the incubation period is there."
Hon. Anthony Mahler
"If you go more than a day then when you come back, you have to test that's how I understand it but there's always going to be some risk dealing with COVID or any virus that we will be confronted in the future and so, we're trying our best to have the borders open for Belizeans as well. As you know in the middle of this year we opened for tourism flow and we think now its high time for us to open it up to Belizeans just like we did for the airport."
Reporter
"There are several factors I think the government will consider there. One has to do with the revenue that stayed in country during this entire time. Do we expect that our local businesses will start losing some of that revenue that will likely go out because people have been waiting for a very long time to go out and get cheaper products and then if you can speak to us about the tourism aspect, numbers we expect of tourists coming through those land borders and its something that you I think would have been waiting for a long time for."
Hon. Anthony Mahler
"Well from a tourism standpoint first, the borders have been open for tourist traffic since July but there were some measures that were in place that made it onerous for them to come back and forth. We believe that just by the nature of the industry in terms of the time, this is the peak season, we believe we will see a lot more flows inbound and outbound, that's where border management makes most of their money for those people going outbound and in terms of locals, we just can't keep lockdown forever as long as we put in the protocols, the process in place to have a safe back and forth across the border, we did so with the free zone and that has been successful, so we believe we can replicate that."
Reporter
"Could you close off the year in terms of tourism, what you're expectations?"
Hon. Anthony Mahler
"We believe with the additional flights that we have coming in, we believe that the efforts that we've been putting in marketing with out international partners and the airlines and with cruise, we believe that we are going to have solid year. Now, anything can happen if a new variant pops up and it's as aggressive as the omnicron or the delta then we can have some issues but we believe that people on a whole now understand how to move, how to travel, how to operate in this new norm and so we believe that in 2022 we should be an uptick in tourism."
