Prime Minister John Briceño has welcomed the one-year interim agreement reached between the Belize Sugar Cane Farmers Association and the American Sugar Refinery/Belize Sugar Industries Ltd that allowed for the start of the new crop sugar season that the authorities hope will yield an estimated 1.3 million tonnes of sugarcane for milling.
The new crop season got under way on Tuesday and Alfredo Ortega, the chairman of the BSCFA Committee of Management, said the interim agreement allows for the government to amend existing laws to prevent the kinds of stalemate that threaten to frustrate the sugar industry.
The two main stakeholders in the sugar industry had been at loggerheads and after almost a year of back and forth, in late October, both parties finally agreed to the services of a mediator following the expiration of the current agreement in January this year.
In his New Year’s Day address to the nation, Briceño said that for the first time in a generation, “our people and communities are infused with optimism.
“The worst of the COVID pandemic is behind us. More Belizeans than ever are working. The national economy is expanding at a record pace and the nation is deepening its democracy and re-examining its constitution.”
He said it is clear to him that a new national pride enlivens homes, workplaces, and the public sphere and that “this positive energy will suffuse 2023 with spectacular rewards.
“A few days ago, for example, stakeholders in the all-important sugar sector bridged their differences so that we expect a bumper crop in both volumes and price. To make this happen my administration expanded our fuel and road repairs subsidies supported improving crop yields as a priority and in a major first will facilitate substantial fertiliser support to farmers, thanks to the government of Morocco.”
Briceño said that the positive breakthrough in the sugar industry “is but one of many successes in a surging agricultural industry where the export of livestock and grains swell with each passing month and where a nascent coconut sector is poised for a boom in production and where stakeholders are working to restore the lustre of the citrus industry”.
