Before the commercial break you heard Minister Godwin Hulse speak about Norwegian Cruise Line and its interest in putting a Cruise Port on Crawl Caye. Hulse is the Chairman of an investment subcommittee assigned by cabinet to look at the matter – but the Prime Minister – in a sense is the "decider." Today he told us government is obligated to look at Norwegian's Officer, but they are in no rush.
Hon. Dean Barrow - Prime Minster of Belize
"Norwegian is talking about an investment of possibly a hundred million dollars, at least in my view, given the need for employment especially in the need for opportunities, government must have the conversation that it is having with Norwegian. Given the location of Crawl Caye, cabinet insisted that the relevant ministries do the proper assessment to ensure that we could even do a project there and that if we could in what ways the project would have to be limited. I see the BTIA saying, 'oh this is going to be a kind of free for all' Norwegian brings hundreds and hundreds of cruise passengers. There is no way we are going to move in any precipitous fashion on this thing, I don't know whether we will move at all but the conversation must occur because you simply don't turn away this potentially huge investment without making absolutely sure that this cannot happen in the larger scheme of things in the larger national."
Jules Vasquez
"In the terms of the MOU are you agreeable?"
Hon. Dean Barrow
"I don't know that I've seen the terms of any MOU, there is a subcommittee, there may be a draft MOU, certainly no MOU has been brought to cabinet but if it's gone beyond the draft stage it can't be no more than and MOU, a Memorandum of Understanding. It can't be any contract, it can't contain obligations at all, the cabinet subcommittee would never do that and if they did the government would reject that sort of thing. As far as I know the process is no where near the point where cabinet can make a decision as to whether to proceed. I've also heard that 'oh this may be good to go as early as next week' absolutely not true. This thing is going through the various protocols in a slow and stately fashion."
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