But while the ostrich business is taking off, the Cannabis legislation has completely halted. One of the main issues the government considered was de-risking when dealing with income gained from marijuana sales. Today Minister Musa said that there have been new developments that would protect correspondent banking.
Kareem Musa, Minister of Home Affairs
"I believe significant strides have been made on the cannabis front, especially in the United States where most of our correspondent banks sit, there was a recent reclassification of cannbis to a schedule one to a schedule three drug and so that will allow for greater bank possibilities within the United States and it's expected that that will translate to greater banking opportunities for Belize as well and as I mentioned, we do have corresponding banking relations, we do want to preserve that by all means and again as before, I don't see it being a big issue so long as long as its a cash industry per se but we do want to move away from it being a cash industry in the future and so with these new classifications, it will help the banking of it."
