And today the Prime Minister also commented on the situation at Maya King Banana Farm in south Stann Creek. As we reported, the farm owners have hit a financial brick wall: due to the drought, they don't have enough earnings to pay their farm workers; and because of former owner John Zabaneh's kingpin designation - no bank will do business with them so they can't get an overdraft facility. Today the Prime Minister said government can't help an individual farm:..
Hon. Dean Barrow, Prime Minister
"Government did try to help, but no bank in Belize will deal with him. He has tried to find a way around it by having nominees to operate the company and you will know that the Social Security Board, notwithstanding whatever pitfalls might have been present, agreed to lend that company as significant amount of money to assist with fertilizer and with other things. So in that sort of a way, government will want to help any large company that is struggling. Government does not though have any kind of bail out pool of funds to deal with a situation like that and I don't anticipate that anytime soon you would see that sort of a development taking place. Certainly on an industrywide basis as we did with citrus. We will always be ready to intervene. I don't know that I can tell you we will ever reached the stage where we will simply be in a position to provide bail out monies to any particular private sector company."
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