The Briceno Administration is now in its 9th month in office, and for the majority of that time, they've had to focus on putting out a number of fires in government - including COVID and the economic crash.

Tonight, the government is reporting that they want to implement some of their governance plans to increase foreign direct investment. If you're an avid news watcher, you'll remember that quite a few times, while they were in Opposition, the PUP was critical of the former Barrow Government for failing to reverse the deterioration of the investment climate in Belize.

And so, the Government is launching the first of its kind Belize Investment Summit 2021. It is a part of the Prime Minister's promise to prioritize the country's economic recovery by attracting investment. The Summit was unveiled publicly today for the first time, and 7News was at the launch event. Daniel Ortiz has that story:

The Briceno Government has unveiled a new initiative that they hope will significantly boost interest from foreign investors with deep pockets.

It's called the Belize Investment Summit, 2021, and it will be held under the theme, "Belize: Open for Business".

Narda Garcia - CEO, Office of Prime Minister <
"The summit is an initiative of Prime Minister Briceno, as the Minister of Investment, as a stimulus to economic growth and recovery. The summit is one of the boldest and swiftest moves that this government has made to help spur local and foreign direct investments. The objective is not only to reach out to the countries that we have existing, beneficial relationships with, but also to those who have shied away from our country because of the numerous red tapes that have caused considerable frustration."

Hon. Chris Coye - Minister of State: Finance, Economic Development, and Investment
"We can't have a system of bureaucracy where the likely response is a ‘no', rather than a ‘yes'. We have to look at how we foster, how we facilitate economic activity, and to do that, we have to first show that yes, Belize is open for business."

One of the main themes of today's launch is that these business-minded officials have taken a long and sober look at the current investment climate in Belize. They say that they have identified key pain points that have discouraged entrepreneurs from choosing this jurisdiction as THE option for their investments.

Hon. Chris Coye
"The clamour of the business community, local and international, has been it's difficult to do business in Belize. Again, the numbers speak to that. When you look at the World Bank's Ease of Doing Business Index, we are at the very bottom, I think roughly 130 out of 190 countries, and we have been descending in that ranking consistently over the past decade. We intend to turn that around and to turn that around drastically. Starting a business in Belize can take, on average, roughly 6 weeks, and the cost of starting a business in Belize is almost prohibitively expensive when we talk about setting up a company."

GOB says that they have already started to deploy changes to ease those pain points.

Hon. Chris Coye
"As far as ease of doing business, we are focusing on specific areas to enable the conduct of business, to enhance the conduct of business in Belize. Some of those areas include trade license reform. I believe that was just recently approved, and that has the support of the business sector; stamp duty reform, exchange control reform, and lands reform. We are, at present, looking at modernizing the companies registry and our companies law. I think it is in the legislative process right now for the reduction of fees in starting a company, and we already have our draft companies law, a work in progress, yes, but I expect in the next couple of months that this will be completed."

Lincoln Blake - Investment Policy and Compliance Unit
"We do recognize that there are structural issues that we need to deal with, so as to improve the to-do business index, which does affect us in attracting new investments. So, currently, we're looking for an example - both internally. We're starting with ourselves at the ministry and BELTRAIDE, where we look at our procedures, our protocols, how do we engage investors. How do we treat investors? How long do we take to process an application? All of that is with the objective to reduce the time, and also that this investment could be implemented as quickly as possible."

Hon. Chris Coye
"Geographically, where are we? We're in Central America. We have markets right around us that we have not fully tapped for trade, or for inward investment. It is now high time that we look to these markets, and we engage to ensure that we attract investment, and we build trade."

Ishmael Quiroz - Executive Director, Economic Development Council
"Another key commitment of the new administration is to vigorously and actively support the digital transformation of the economy. The Cabinet has run with a suite of new digital laws and has enthusiastically supported the passage of those. So, that has been in preparation. It will contribute significantly to the roll-out of E-governance initiatives, as well as E-commerce uptake."

Lincoln Blake
"By the time we get to the Investment Summit, we should have significant amounts of initiatives, interventions, and changes, not only in procedures and policy, but also in law, to ensure that those investors feel a lot more comfortable and make sure that we give an indication that Belize really is open for business."

The Summit is scheduled to take place on November 3rd and 4th. It will take place virtually and in person at Grand Caribe Hotel, San Pedro Town.

You Schools Aged Kids Now In Gangs

Turning back now to the commissioner's press conference.

He took a minute to talk about minors, many of whom have been linked to homicide and other daring crimes.

According to him, it's a side effect of pandemic-time school closure.

But kids have also become victims in the gang war. That is the case of 15-year-old Kassman Gill, who had just left his home on Monday when a gunman shot him twice. On Tuesday we told you he was hanging by a threat, but today his father gave us an uplifting update. He said that Kassman has opened his eyes and is responding. Unfortunately, he is paralyzed in his lower body. We will continue to follow his recovery process.

The Making of A PUP SOE

And while the SOE may be the best course of action at this time to protect all parties, here's how it will work:

Is Chester Ineffective?

The best interest of our people or the best interest of our commissioner?

As you heard Williams admits that he recommended this newest S.O.E., So, is it his fallback tactic, or is it necessitated by the ineffectiveness of his command?

Here's how he answered that one.

The Southside state of emergency includes The Backaland area, the Antelope Street Ext area, The Supal street area, The Rocky road area, George street, and the Mayflower area.

KHMH Says Not At Capacity

The third wave of COVID and the recent spike in crime has flooded the KHMH intensive care units and this morning, reports said the hospital was above capacity for critical patients.

A release from the hospital clarified that the hospital is not in emergency mode, though. Instead, they have activated the second phase of their COVID 19 response to increase space to accommodate additional emergency patients. However, if COVID 19 admissions and trauma cases continue to increase, there may be a reduction of services and eventually the activation of full emergency mode.

Bad Business, Budna

Tonight, the well-known and notorious Joseph Ryan Budna, who escaped from a prison in Guatemala 2 years ago, is back at the Belize Central Prison on remand. The 41-year-old is being accused of committing a sexual assault on a 16-year-old minor.

As viewers may remember, Budna made local and international news back in May of 2019, when he escaped from a Guatemalan jail. He had been serving a 25-year sentence for kidnapping, and so, when he was caught in Belize, many thought that he would be sent back to Guatemala to continue serving out his sentence. Fortunately for him, there is no extradition treaty between Belize and Guatemala, and so, the authorities released him without any charges.

You would think that since he escaped that incarceration, Budna would stay off the police's radar. But the cops are alleging that on August 13, 2021, he committed 2 counts of sexual assault on a minor. He was arraigned today before the sitting Magistrate in Belmopan, and when he was read his charges, he pleaded not guilty.

The police prosecutor objected to him being granted bail for these new charges on the grounds that he is currently out on Supreme Court Bail for a similar sexual offense. Reports to 7News are that on July 2, 2021, Justice Antoinette Moore granted him bail for that accusation with the conditions that he is not supposed to interfere with any of the prosecution's witnesses, especially the victim. Also, he is supposed to remain at least 100 yards away from his accuser.

After consideration, the sitting Magistrate in Belmopan agreed with the police prosecutor and remanded Budna to the Belize Central Prison until November 2021.

Tackling The Complex Curriculum

Earlier in the news, we told you about some of the Ministry of Education's plans for students going forward. One of the major new changes that will be implemented at the start of this school year is the reforming of the curriculum. After months of consultations, the ministry deemed several subjects both at the primary and secondary level as unnecessary, only adding to the already heavy load of the students. Those subjects have been removed and several schools will be piloting this project come next week. The Minister of State, Dr Louis Zabaneh, explained more.

Hon. Dr. Louis Zabaneh - Minister of State, Ministry of Education
"We have started out with addressing the fundamental issue first of curriculum overload. By addressing curriculum overload first, then when we start moving into other areas of curriculum reform, which is as you can imagine, is quite extensive, expansive, that we will have the foundation set so that we will have success in these other areas. In a nutshell, basically we've met with at least 15 stakeholder's groups. I am pleased to report to you that the vast majority of our partners across the board recognize the negative impact that curriculum overload is having on the performance of our students and us, with all our best efforts, failing to make education succeed because we've had these stressful settings that the overload has caused. We can now come to a point where we are now removing about 40% of the learning outcomes from the curriculum and we're also reducing the number of subjects from approximately 12 to 13 at the primary level, so about 8 to 9 subjects at the primary level and about 13-14 subjects at the secondary level to about 9-10 subjects. In combination we now anticipate that teachers will be able to deliver, given the amount of time they have. Children will be able to assimilate the information, be able to do so in a deep way and not just in a thin manner that was done before. We're starting a pilot project this year with 16 government schools, 12 primary and 4 secondary. In there we're going to be measuring, assessing this intervention and also be looking at all the other schools and compare it to pre COVID times and see the impact that this intervention this is going ot be having on the outcomes of our students."

The System Needs A Fix

But the curriculum isn't the only thing that is being reformed. In fact, the entire education system is being revamped from military type procedures and policies to a more student-centered way of learning. Students' mental and physical health will be given more consideration and their teaching plans will be more individualized. There will be a greater focus on adult education and special needs students as well. The Ministry also spoke about greater access for students living in poverty – and reemphasized their manifesto promise of free education. It's a great feat for the ministry, and one they believe they'll be able to accomplish in the next four years. The deputy chief education officer broke down the four domains they will be targeting.

Dr. Neulin Villanueva - Deputy Chief Education Officer
"In domain one, reforming the system of education, we have three components. The first component is to restructure the ministry of education in order to increase its efficiency and capacity and its effectiveness to respond to the needs of the education system. The second component of reforming the system has to do with our education finances. We want to be able to use our financial resources and programs to improve performances, expanded access, and increase equity accountability. In the second domain, transformation of teaching and learning, we are going to start with the curriculum. And here we want to make sure we have a curriculum that is going to provide thee knowledge, skills, values and attitudes that students need for their own personal development as well as development for the nation. So, our focus here is learning what matters. The last component of that area is our teacher development. In this area we want to transform our teacher education and professional development program and also incentivize good teaching practices. The domain three, prioritizing underserved sectors, again we have three components, and this is all about serving those students who are always left behind in the system. The first one is paying attention to our early education sector where we want to make sure we have the policies, the curricular reform and access to quality early childhood education. Our second component of undeserved sectors is to pay attention to those students who through social, socio economic or psychological challenges are barred from inclusion and learning. The third component o this particular domain is our special education sector and here we want to make sure we have legislation policies, programs and the resources needed for persons with diverse abilities to be included and can attain to their highest potential in the education system. And last but not least our domain of maximizing human capital. Here we start with our TVET sector where we want to build a TVET sector that means the needs through improved quality, relevance and responsiveness. And last but not least as we recognize that education is a lifelong progress, we want to take care of our adult education sector by creating programs and upgrading of the work force and build Belize's human capital."

UB and MOE

And there are other ways the ministry will try to improve the education sector outside of normal classrooms. The minister explained that they planned on partnering with the University of Belize to introduce courses to assist those in other sectors including agriculture and tourism.

Back Pack Buddies With BPO

It's back-to-school season, and for many suffering through the financial meltdown of the pandemic buying school supplies maybe just out of reach.

It's a reality that the National Council for Families and Children knows all too well. One that they set out to combat.

They asked one local business for 25 backpacks but got much, much more. Here's that story.