Cruise Tourism in Belize, a Tangled Mess

While chatting with Lord Ashcroft this morning, the topic of cruise tourism also came up. As a major player in the industry, he didn’t shy away from sharing his thoughts on the Stake Bank project. He also pointed out the flaws in the proposed Portico and Port of Belize cruise terminals.

 

Lord Michael Ashcroft, Political Observer

“So here we have on things like Stake Bank and others, yes, we want a port or we want a cruise terminal and we want that…  Good policies, what’s the plan?  And this is where it always falls down because there’s no plan, and so, something like Stake Bank, it all starts off, Stake Bank was a favorite of the government of the time.  They got all the concessions, off they went, and then all of a sudden, there’s Portico down in the south and that looks a bit more interesting, well let’s abandon Stake Bank.  Stake Bank run up an enormous amount of debt, Atlantic Bank is up to here in loans to Stake Bank, government moves over here and Stake Bank is in trouble.  Then they concede that Atlantic Bank will be in trouble if Stake Bank defaults.  So now the government’s gotta panic around to try to save Stake Bank and what they did because of Portico down here and they couldn’t get the Port of Belize together and then they made sure that the Port of Belize’s environmental clearance was negated.  Then they fixed it, so NEAC said no, they’re all in a a mess everywhere.”