Briceño Offered To Recuse Himself From BTL-Cabinet Meeting

The debate over the future of Belize’s telecom landscape is heating up again, this time with Minister Kareem Musa pushing back firmly against claims that the consolidation of BTL is paving the way for a monopoly. Musa says it’s actually the opposite, arguing that Belize is on the edge of what he calls “super competition,” with international providers and emerging technologies gearing up to shake things up. And on the question of conflicts of interest at the Cabinet level, he says those concerns were put squarely on the table, even noting that the Prime Minister offered to recuse himself from Tuesday’s meeting with BTL executives. Here’s how Musa explains the path forward.

 

Kareem Musa, Minister of Immigration

“I don’t see it as a monopoly, and I’ll tell you why. I believe that we are entering into an era of super competition. When you look at Starlink. When you look at the type of resources that they’re going to be coming with in terms of implementing their networks here in country and other potential networks from international sources, it’s going to be super competition. Again, it’s not the Prime Minister that owns the company and the Prime Minister, as a matter of fact, even offered to recuse himself. But that did not stop us. We said, no it isn’t necessary Prime Minister. That did not stop us from voicing our very candid questions that we had, concerns that we had. And so it, it did not have that type of impact. And like I said, he offered to recuse himself, but Cabinet did not feel that necessary.”