7 News Belize

Declining Fortunes At Freezone
posted (March 9, 2016)
For the next budgetary year, the Government is forecasting only moderate GDP growth due to a downturn in agriculture and oil production. But, there's also a sharp downturn in business at the Corozal Free Zone. And that's because tobacco sales have plummeted. As we have reported, a significant part of the business in the zone was importing dozens of containers of Chinese cigarettes and then smuggling them over to Mexico. But the Mexicans have been cracking down, and the man who ran the racket, Ernesto Alonso De Miguel, known as "El Espanol" was executed. Those events, and other factors have led to a downturn in Free Zone business, and simultaneously, banks have been forced to close their accounts with these cigarette importers. Yesterday, the Prime Minister said it was lamentable but inevitable:

Rt. Hon. Dean Barrow, Prime Minister

"We're all aware of the allegations, the charges that have been made in terms of contra-banding and the illegal export of the cigarettes to Mexico and the illegal importation of what supposed to be coming from let's say China but according to various sources knock offs of the big boys. It is perfectly understandable thought that the banks would say, look we're going to bank anybody who is in the cigarette trade. It is a matter of the banks having the individual commercial banks, having to make sure that nobody with whom they are trying to do correspondent businesses will be able to say but you're infrastructure is faulty or you're business model or some of the people that you're banking immediately set off alarm bells ringing."

Home | Archives | Downloads/Podcasts | Advertise | Contact Us

7 News Belize