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We told you last week of the reports that had emerged that the City's Trade License Board was considering billing Apex a half a million dollars for its trade license to manage the Civic Center. We asked the Deputy Mayor about it 8 day ago, and, today, when we brought it up again, he said that he has done checks with the Board, and the final assessment that Apex has been given is nowhere near that figure:

Oscar Arnold, Deputy Mayor, Belize City
"I know that our trade license board had met. They sent a letter as supposed to the quantum of that. If APEX had received that letter as yet, I can't confirm and because of that I don't want to prejudice anything and say okay this is the amount there. I am aware of the amount, it's not $500,000. But because I haven't received any confirmation that APEX have received their letter, I won't want to comment on the quantum of that just yet."

Reporter
"Is it significantly less?"

Oscar Arnold, Deputy Mayor, Belize City
"Hugely less."

Reporter
"Isn't all of what you just said a matter of semantics though? You referring to APEX as opposed to the civic center. At the end of the day the operator has to charge the person entering more of he is being charged more. Whether you call it a tax or a trade license, a fee, whatever it is you want to classify it as, it's still payment that has to be made."

Oscar Arnold, Deputy Mayor, Belize City
"It's not semantics. If you are getting into business and if you are a responsible investor, then you know that there are certain costs that you must take into consideration and one of those costs is trade license. As far as I know they did provisioned for it in their original prospectus. The amount that they provisioned for was far more than what they are being charged."