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Last night we told you about the issues between Belize and Guatemala and how a high level working group has been appointed to resolve it. And while minor disputes and confrontations continue at the ground level, at the official level there is one sign of unprecedented progress. Guatemala has ratified the Partial Scope Trade Agreement and it will go into effect on April fourth, 2010. It was approved in October 2009 by the Guatemalan Congress after labouring in that country’s Congress for 41 months. And now the first ever country to country treaty between Belize and Guatemala is just weeks from coming into effect. At a press briefing yesterday, Belize’s Ambassador to Guatemala put it in context.

Fred Martinez, Ambassador to Guatemala
“We took the opportunity of the Prime Minister’s visit to request that Guatemala ratify the Partial Scope Agreement. The Prime Minister was handed over with the ratification of the Partial Scope Agreement on trade which now takes effect on the 4th of next month. It is very historic, it is the first bilateral agreement that was ever signed between our two countries. It is the bilateral agreement that has been ratified by the Guatemalan Congress and ratified by the President of Guatemala. We stand to benefit a lot in agricultural exports to Guatemala. It is basically more one sided in our favour as to the exports of Belize into Guatemala because of the disparity in the size of the economies. A symmetry of economics was respected in negotiations and it opens our exports of corn, rice, beans, various agricultural products into Guatemala more so than Guatemalan products into Belize almost immediately.”

According to Martinez, when Prime Minister Dean Barrow met with Guatemala’s president Alvaro Colom last week – they also discussed the situation in the Sarstoon where the Guatemalan navy was harassing Belize’s soldiers.