7 News Belize

Free Zone Banking Difficulties Resolved (With Difficulty)
posted (December 17, 2010)
And while the Prime Minister says that he can't intervene in CPBL's affairs - in the past month the government did bail out the sugar industry and today it was announced that they had come up with a banking fix for the Free Zone.

As we first reported a week ago - business in the zone had been seriously jeopardized over the past 6 weeks - after the Central Bank lost its correspondent Banking relationship with HSBC bank - which had to terminate all its foreign currency cash operations in Central America.

That meant that zone business had nowhere to bank all the US dollars that they collect daily - and no way to pay off creditors. A big problem that threatened the continued existence of the zone and the scores of jobs it creates. But now, it's been fixed; the Prime Minister announced it as the first order of business at today's sitting of the House Of Representatives…

PM Dean Barrow
"New arrangements have been concluded. The money will be taken out of the country to the Federal Reserve Bank in New York and so the crisis is over. I have assured the merchants. It's another crisis that the government has solved. The central bank will continue to look at additional currency shipment relationships with banks other than the federal bank because it's never good to have all your eggs in one basket. The people that are most intimately involve will be kept apprise of developments but the fact is that the crisis is over and business continues as before. "

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7 News Belize