Today we asked the PM about it- and he set out a broader vision for Ports in Belize:

Jules Vasquez:
"You all paid hundreds of millions in settlements as well, including for the port and nothing has happened with the port and we know that there is antipathy to put it nicely between the chairman and the CEO, I heard they don't talk, and also there's no progress at the port, you can't say that there's investment or that the port has opened up or that a strategic investment, the port is stagnant."

John Briceno, Prime Minister
"Again, you are good at spinning the negative, and I give you credit for that but what you don't see, you don't see the work that is being done behind the scenes. And we expect that by I think it was next month or at the latest in March, right now we have a group out of Miami working on a masterplan on how we're going to progress, how we're going to move the port forward and the investments necessary. I presented a paper to the Cabinet several months ago on what are the different options. A is to do a cruise and container port and B to be able to do just the container port. And we saw the options that Cabinet felt that it's in the best interest to do both. So we're working on the masterplan to do that, the previous owners were working on a masterplan but of course now they want to charge us an exorbitant amount of money if we want to take over that plan they were working on so it's best we do our own. It's pushing us back a few months. There have been a number of companies that have expressed interest, MSC has expressed interest, Carnival has expressed interest, other investors expressed interest but we are not going to do anything until we have, see, this is the plan, who are going to be the strategic investors. There are many people who have come in and said we would be interested, but we don't just want to jump at it, we need to have a plan and then we're going to move forward so I do believe by the end of the next government, we should have a cruise port and a modern container port."

Jules Vasquez:
"So does that mean Stake Bank is dead?"

John Briceno, Prime Minister
"That's not for me to decide."

Jules Vasquez:
"But I'm saying that there's no sense in having two mega cruise ports in the Belize District within miles of each other."

John Briceno, Prime Minister
"We all knew that Stake Bank was short term to medium term investment. Why? Because A the berthing facilities cannot take the big ships and B, probably more important, these cruise ships they want to berth on land, the tendering is a big issue so we knew that this was a temporary fix and then eventually we have to build somewhere near sure."