The Largest U.S. Investment Ever in Belize Is Now Underway

The long-awaited Millennium Challenge Account Compact between Belize and the United States is finally moving from the planning stage to implementation. After years of negotiations, consultations and restructuring, the multi-million-dollar partnership was officially launched today, paving the way for major investments in Belize’s education system and energy sector. U.S. Charge d’Affaires Katharine Beamer says the MCA is the United States’ largest single investment ever in Belize coming after years of close collaboration between both countries to deliver lasting benefits for Belize’s workforce and economy, while Prime Minister John Briceño says the government purposely prioritized education and energy as the country’s greatest needs.

 

Katharine Beamer, Charge d’Affaires, United States Embassy

“Everything about this agreement, from the determination of which sectors the compact will invest in to the details of how and why those investments will be made, all came through thoughtful coordination and hard work between our two countries. By working together to transform Belize’s education system, we can give new opportunities to the next generation of Belizeans entering the labor market and help businesses find more workers with the twenty-first-century skills they need to grow. Meanwhile, investments to fund key energy infrastructure that the country desperately needs and reforms to strengthen and modernize Belize’s energy policy and regulatory framework will lower the overall cost of electricity to the Belizean people and help strengthen Belize’s power sector in the years to come.”

 

Prime Minister John Briceño

“When they met with us and said let’s come up with a list of things where we believe that Belize’s priorities, and then start to narrow it,” we said, “Listen, we know the two priorities that we had. One was education and the second one was energy.” Happy that they quickly agreed on that, and so that’s what we’ve been working on. It’s been a long process in the sense that we’ve been in a lot of consultations, especially when it come with the education with the with the teachers, with the Ministry of Finance, and likewise with energy, trying to address the challenges that we’re facing with energy. In a way, we’ve been a victim of our own success. Our economy has grown way faster than it was expected, so we are already consuming what was projected for, I think, for twenty twenty-eight and probably twenty twenty-nine. I think it was a wise decision to hone into those two areas.”

 

The Government of Belize has committed to seventy-six million dollars in energy sector financing as part of the agreement. 

 

Attention readers: This online newscast is a direct transcript of our evening television broadcast. When speakers use Kriol, we have carefully rendered their words using a standard spelling system.

 

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