$140M Upgrade Set to Transform Port of Belize

Big things are about to happen at the Port of Belize, and we’re talking major upgrades that could change the game. It’s a massive upgrade worth 140 million U.S. dollars. After taking over the port in 2023, the government promised to make it a powerhouse, and now we’re seeing what that means. We’re talking brand-new cargo facilities to speed up imports and exports, a state-of-the-art cruise terminal for the biggest ships, and even a four-hundred-acre mangrove park to help fight climate change. And here’s something else, Belize could soon tap into Mexico’s Tren Maya project to boost trade across the region. Prime Minister John Briceño shared more details on what’s coming.

 

Prime Minister John Briceño

“We negotiated and we negotiated hard and we bought the port. I think we paid about one hundred ninety million. Once we got that, then we said, no, we need to modernize it. We need a cruise port. As I pointed out, the container port, the equipment is more than years old that has outlived it’s life. And so we need to modernize it. And so what we’ve been doing since then, we made a study, we took it to cabinet. Everything is decided by cabinet. I made up a paper to present that paper to cabinet as to what position, do we want to do only a container port, only a cruise port or both of them. And the cabinet said in the wisdom that we need to do both. And so now we come up to an estimate. It is estimated around one hundred and forty million US dollars. And then after that we work on the, on a master plan that was presented to cabinet. Cabinet has accepted the master plan. We started to meet with potential investors like SSC Marine from BlackRock. The company is owned by the company is owned by BlackRock in the United States. We have global ports holding from Turkey. Both of these companies have been building ports, not only in the US but also in the region and internationally. So these are bonafide investors that were coming. We’ve been talking to our work. We’re trying to prepare also to start to do the judging. And so this time around, what we’ve decided to do is to the excess material that we can’t use, we’re going to build these, what they call mangrove forests. Pretty much about four hundred acres of mangroves. It’s not going to be one block of four hundred, but small islands that will cover about four hunded acres and to plant mangroves.”