Corona Beer Import Permit Put on Pause  

The import permit that the Government of Belize granted to Goliath Investment Company to import ten thousand cases of Corona Beer from Mexico has been put on hold. Today, C.E.O. in the Ministry of Agriculture, Servulo Baeza, confirmed with News Five that the permit is on pause and that the company has not brought in any of the beer since the permit was granted a couple weeks ago. But who are the principals of Goliath Investment Company? From our research, we discovered that there are at least two shareholders, Jose Aldana and Emily Melissa Waight of a Tenth Street Address in San Ignacio, Cayo. The company, as far as we’re informed, was registered recently and is not a member of the Belize Chamber of Commerce and Industry.  And while the news that Goliath and its investors will not be allowed to act on their permit, Bowen and Bowen and Caribbean International Brewing Limited, brewers of Belikin and Mine beers, respectively, were still up in arms over the decision to grant the permit in the first place. With taxes included, a case of imported beer was estimated to sell at a hundred and thirty-five dollars a case, which calculates to a million, three hundred and fifty thousand dollars at the end of the last sale. But the reason why the two breweries are upset goes beyond the legal importation. They estimate that for every case that is imported legally, there are several more that are contrabanded. Today, Bowen and Bowen’s Corporate Relations Manager, Rosanna Villanueva told us that it goes beyond just the loss of revenue for what is imported legally, but the long-term repercussions to the industry. Similarly, Caribbean International Brewery’s Communications Director, Fortunato Noble told News Five this afternoon that the importation would have affected everybody.

 

Via phone: Fortunato Noble, Communications Dir., Caribbean Int’l Brewery Co. Ltd.

“It will affect the economy. It’s – you’re opening a kind of one that you don’t want to get into that messy situation because if you allow, and let’s say the permit is granted for argument’s sake for ten thousand cases. Who is going to monitor the fact that only ten thousand cases will come in? Because we know our porous borders. We know that you can bring in ten thousand cases and you can bring in, a hundred thousand cases the same way. Who is going to monitor that It’s ten thousand cases that they brought in? So it would affect us, of course, it would affect the beer industry in Belize, both Belikin and Mine, because people – you want something new, ih nuh matter if it costs five dollars, people will go for it and that will take away from our sale, that’s a given. But how does that affect our local industry? We cannot compete with a market from Mexico. And they say, okay, the tariff will be a hundred percent. Yeah, okay, yes, I agree, but who is going to see that that is carried out? We don’t have no problem with it. They say they’ll pay the taxes, but there is the danger that they will abuse it. And we, as it is, the country cannot police the borders properly. We are at least, for the time being, assured  from what he said on the media that, hey, we de pull the permit right now, we put it on pause, and I am sure cooler heads will prevail, and sense will prevail, and the person or the company that is being allowed to bring in the Coronas will not get that permit.”