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The Foreign Minister of Ecuador Ricardo Patino led a 13-person delegation to Belize for a one-day visit today. As the second smallest country in South America, Ecuador is looking for partners with similar interest. But when we say Ecuador is small, that's only in a South American context. For example, they are building 8 hydroelectric dams and a 12 billion dollar refinery. That's big money business, but today their Foreign Minister explained why they came to partner with Belize:…

Ricardo Patino, Foreign Minister, Ecuador

"We know about the great development that Belize has had in the last years and we want to deepen our relation with out brother countries such as Belize. Which is why we would like to develop relations with smaller countries in Latin America and the Caribbean because we sure this is the only way that we can all develop together. We can work together in tourism, in trade, in many other subjects. We know that you have teaching centers of English as a foreign language, so we would like for our teachers, our Ecuadorian teachers to come here and study in your centers so they can teach English back home. We would like to invite the people of Belize maybe for next year if they could come to the university and see and be apart of the all development we are having there and the students can also study in our university."

Elrington and Patino signed a basic technical cooperation agreement between the government of Belize and Ecuador and a Memorandum of Understanding for the establishment of bilateral consultations between both countries' Ministries of Foreign Affairs.

It is the biggest delegation of officials from any South American country to ever visit Belize. They left this evening at 5:00.