In October, you heard the Minister of Agriculture say he was onboard with the idea of BSI/ASI selling packaged sugar. Of course, that would come with an increase cost, but it would de-incentivize smugglers from taking the sugar across the border, which would mean more bags would be on Belizean shelves.
And while the public might not enjoying hearing that another household staple will be seeing a price increase, the PM said as it is, the cost of sugar is already too low.
John Briceno, Prime Minister
"Well, the reality is that our sugar has been smuggled into Mexico and Guatemala, and no matter what we do, it's going to continue if we can kind of remove the incentive. Really, we are selling our sugar way, way too low."
"One of the, again, the ideas that we've been talking about is we will not allow the price to go up a lot. We're considering and raising just a bit so we could disincentivize the people that are taking this on contraband."
"You could full a chocolate of sugar, and you could get to the border, and they can't do nothing. It's when you cross the border. So we have stopped trucks going down south full of sugar, but you can't do them nothing."
"They are in country. So I use that to say it's very difficult and when you cross the border, you can't go and arrest them on the other side. So that's the challenge. One of the ideas that, again, cabinet has said is to keep it in bagged, but also then to remove the control in packaging."
"What used to be called a marketing board. They are looking at the possibility of starting to package it, and so off to be able to offsell, and that then will be able to raise the price a little bit because it's going to be packaged."
"But we can't leave things as they are because we're going to continue running out of sugar, and then when we run out of sugar, you Courtney will be the first one on TV. Oh, no sugar in Belize, when we are producing sugar."
"We need to find a balance. I understand the challenges, Belizeans are still facing with inflation. Despite that the numbers are going down, it goes down compared to last year, not to 2020. So we understand that we live that every day, and we live the challenges of that, not only in Belize. Worldwide, there is not a country in the world that is not facing that challenge, and we're doing as best as we can."
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