Time has passed, the uproar has subsided and the ship, both figuratively and literally, has sailed. We say literally because today we found out from the Ministry of Forestry that the Rosewood transactions have been completed and the half of the proceeds that Government was to get has already been calculated and paid. The news is that it's only 15 thousand dollars per container of nine thousand board feet. Exasperated, the Minister explained.

Reporter
"Minister can you give us an update in relation to the Rosewood, I know that it was set to be exported?"

Hon. Lisel Alamilla - Minster or Forestry
"Rosewood again!"

Reporter "What was brought out hasn't been exported as yet."

Hon. Lisel Alamilla
"Rosewood - in fact a lot of it has been exported already but remember that the amnesty doesn't require you to export it, the amnesty was just for us to go in and quantify it and to regularize what was on the ground - stamp it and collect all royalties. The Rosewood that we accounted for can be sold locally or people can sit on it and wait for maybe the prices to go up and speculate that maybe a year from now or two years from now they can get a better price. I think we have shipped a number of containers or at least given the permits for at least 15 containers to be shipped or more."

Reporter
"But the agreement had been that 50% of what was sold out there would come to government."

Hon. Lisel Alamilla
"Yes, everytime they get a permit they have to pay up first before."

Reporter
"Can you say how much has been going to government from that?"

Hon. Lisel Alamilla
"The royalties right now (they are called royalties within the Forest Act) is about $300,000 - is the last time I checked which was a while back."

Jules Vasquez
"How are you sure that you are getting half of what you actually sell it for?"

Hon. Lisel Alamilla
"Jules, we had to negotiate a price based on what we heard people are making. We hear all sorts of figures of what a container fetches and it varied really; everyone that came in had a different figure that they were telling us. It just got to the point that we had to say, you know what we have to get this material out - just pay us our share, a fair share and then export your material and let's move on with other business within the Forest Department."

Jules Vasquez
"Wouldn't have been more precise if you say, show me your invoice that you have to use for the shipping purposes and then we can determine what my pound of flesh is."

Hon. Lisel Alamilla
"No, I didn't go into that level with it really."

Reporter
"No? So how do you ensure that you're getting 50%?"

Hon. Lisel Alamilla
"I'm telling you, I negotiated a price - $15,000 Belize dollars per container."

Reporter
"And how much does a container's board fee - is it $40,000?"

Hon. Lisel Alamilla
"No, it's $9,000."

As it stands now, only the amnestied Rosewood can be exported, since the hardwood is now listed under CITES and exportation requires extensive international permits.