And in speaking with the media today, the Prime Minister also addressed the hot button issue of Rice.
As we've reported, the Blue Creek Rice producers - who generate most of the rice consumed in this country say their sales are down by over 25% - and they have pinned the blame on the Belize Marketing and Development Corporation.
They blame the BMDC for all kinds of undermining activities - right up to importing and distributing Uruguayan rice.
They met with the Prime Minister on Wednesday to ventilate their complaints and he agreed the BMDC is a problem - but not that big a problem, and if they doubt it, they can go check for themselves:..
Prime Minister Dean Barrow
"I made it plain that I accept that all is far from well with the BMDC, and there is nothing Simon Pure about the BMDC, but to suggest that the BMDC is importing rice and when I say well, let's go to customs and then they say well no they are importing rice illegally their contrabanding rice "man" that strikes me as entirely far fetch."
"In any case though it turned out take the marketing board board of directors had not been functioning for a while, the new board is being appointed which includes the chairman of the Blue Creek Mennonite committee. We are putting him on the board, I have agreed that they can suggest to me somebody who will be acceptable to them, that we will put inside the marketing board as a day to day monitor. I have made it plain that we will change the law to ensure that marketing board cannot import legally at all except in particular exigencies and that will require a specialize license, so I am trying to assure these people, that if the problem is with the marketing board, we will fix it, if it's as I suspect simply a question over supply then we have to start looking at how we can help them to lower their cost of production, so that they can compete."
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