7 News Belize

Citrus Growers Assoc. In Serious Problems
posted (October 18, 2019)
And while the drought will cost Belizean farmers tens of millions of dollars in crop losses, the crisis in the citrus industry is deeper than just the drought. Sure, citrus greening has wiped out huge acreages and sliced production, but the Citrus Growers Association is facing its own crisis. This farmers group is saddled by debts which it can no longer service - and now the biggest collection of average sized growers is facing bankruptcy. Hulse discussed this difficult crossroads today:..

Hon. Godwin Hulse - Minister of Agriculture
"We have met with the citrus growers people continuously. In fact last week Friday the prime minister and myself together with the financial secretary and my CEO Mr. Alpuche met with the CGA people for the better part of 3 hours to look a list of about 8 requests and/or demands that they had. The fundamental problem though is that there are 2 organizations; the citrus mutual and there is the CGA and CPBL, the factory and so there is a divergence of opinion. As far as I understand it the large Citrus Mutual people don't have any major issues. The small citrus people are the people with the issues but their issue stems from the fact that their association is in dire straits. CGA owes a lot of money. It is in the verge of bankruptcy, if not already bankrupt. It needs to restructure urgently. The bigger farmers are running well. What we in the ministry would like to see is to unite the industry and bring them together as one industry. There is already the issue of export of fresh fruits which is sensitive, because we already have a reduce amount of fruit for the factory and the farmers begin to export - it even further reduces the quantity and it puts the factory in jeopardy. That is one of the things we are trying to prevent."

Reporter
"At what point does the government assist financially?"

Hon. Godwin Hulse
"Well it depends what assist financially with. I mean duty free fuel that is a financial assistance for sure. But actually if you talk about injecting cash in there that is not going to happen. These are individual independent farmers and you do know that in fact they also come under the program that we mentioned during the last press conference that we have agree with the central bank and the banks that they are going to roll over their loans, they are going to make facilities available, reduce interest - the bank is going to remove the classification requirement of 6 months to up to about 18 months and also de-risk from 100% to 50%. They also benefit with that."

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