Minister of Natural Resources Cordel Hyde told us that the legislation was nearly completed and that it would soon get into the House. But today the PM said, he'd been working on that legislation since 2007 - now, years later, it still isn't ready. But Briceno added that - of course - if they win, the priority will be digitizing the Lands Department.

John Briceno, Prime Minister
"It is difficult for me to be able to comment on something that I don't really know the facts. But from what I understand, Mr Boris Mannsfeld, the problems that he had been facing, he and his partner have to do with private land, not government land and where in some instances, it's alleged that they fraudulently. Now, there is a process when you are transferring land from one person to another. Maybe the people at Lands could have been more vigilant probably. but yes I think there's a lot that has to done in the Lands Department. There are a number of things that we want to put into place. First of all the DPM has given me a copy of the proposed legislation for real estate agents to regulate that industry. It is something that I started working, I had it pretty much ready when I resigned back then in 2007 but it seems that the previous government had no interest in working on that. Our DPM was tied up with all of these land clinics that he continues to do. And now that he finally has this bill ready to take to Cabinet and then to the National Assembly well the elections came up on us. In his mind, the timeline he was working I think was November 2025 so he did not have it ready to take it to the National Assembly but we're working on that so we have that ready and that's going to be a priority in the next government. Secondly, we're looking at digitizing the land registry."

"And the titles unit. Because once we can digitize that, it slows down, it makes the issue of fraudulent transaction, it makes it more difficult because then there is a digital imprint of what is happening. And so we want to do that, not only to prevent fraud but also to provide an effective and efficient service for the private sector. And thirdly, we need to be able to digitize the land tax unit of the ministry and see once we can digitize that, maybe look at how the Lands Department can partner with the Belize Tax Service to be able to have a more effective and efficient way to be able to collect Land Tax."