And this morning on Sunup, the PM came prepared to further defend the project which has attracted some criticism for the many unknowns.
First, he said they did consult with BEL, or at least, kind of:
John Briceno, Prime Minister
"We do consult with BEL. BEL is our partner as a government and government owns..."
Host
"But they were initially consulted in the beginning?"
John Briceno, Prime Minister
"Of course, they were. But what the chairman never tell you is that we would not go to BEL and say should we buy solar energy? the study that has to be done by Siemens is saying that we need to go solar. They say 140megawatts of solar."
Host "The feasibility study they are saying that..."
John Briceno, Prime Minister
"Yes, the Siemens that they paid for. So whilst the government never gone to tell them, ey we di think to go get a solar plant', but we don't need to do that. Their study is saying that we need to start off with 140 megawatts of solar. So, he is right in the sense that we never initially."
"BEL is our partner and we work together with them, but it doesn't mean when you are a partner for every single thing."
"You're not married yet, right?"
Host
"Yes, I am married."
John Briceno, Prime Minister
"I'm sure that many times when you go and buy shoes, you don't go and tell your husband every shoes you go and buy, or you go buy a lipstick. He expects you buy these things because it's a part of the partnership with your husband."
Host
"So who's going to be the agency or the entity managing this solar power?"
John Briceno, Prime Minister
"What is happening now, what we need to do now and its a discussion I'm having this afternoon with the PUP and the Ministry of Energy and I invited the chairman. Unfortunately, he is not here. In countries as your energy demands grows and then you have more private sector producing energy. What you do then that you have like an NGO sort of company that then decides where to buy energy. If you have 4-5 different outlets where you could buy energy, so you know that tomorrow you're going to be using 10 megawatts and the company is saying from 6am-9am I could give you for 15 cents and the other 20 cents, so that will say okay you are the cheapest one so I am going to buy from you so much at this hour and then from this hour to this hour - that's what they do in other countries. Then that will allow us from a medium to long term plan."
"I have spoken to every president in Central America including President Giammattei from Guatemala, whereby we want to correct to the Central American grid. By connecting to Central American then, also that means that if Mexico don't have enough energy, we could take from Central America. But more importantly, we could put more solar plants in Belize and then put energy and sell in into the Central American grid."
"We have a company that will run the plant and it is not going to be profit driven, but its going to be able to pay its expenses, to pay the loan, but keep the price as low as we possible can, then we could put it into the grid through BEL. Because at the end of the day what is it our long term plan. We want to reduce the cost of energy."
