Last week, we gave you extensive coverage of the CARICOM Heads Of Government meeting held on the Placencia Peninsula, which Prime Minister Dean Barrow Chaired. A major part of those high level discussions was the threat that the de-risking phenomenon poses to bank indigenous to the Caribbean.

A very extensive action plan has been passed by the CARICOM Heads of Government to try to tackle this problem, which is complex and has no quick fixes, and no easy resolution. In the meantime, the US Embassy in Belize has been observing the effects it has been having in this country. They’ve been working closely to try to assist the Belize Government in anyway it can to reach out to the relevant authorities in the US. Today, at another event, Ambassador Carlos Moreno told us that he and his subordinates have not been sitting on their hands while this issue unfolds:

Reporter

"Have you been contacted by Belize or government in terms of ways of how the US embassy can intervene?"

H.E. Carlos Moreno - US Ambassador

"Yes for the last 15 months our embassy has been working with the Bankers Association and Central Bank and with the Prime Minister and other aspects of government to resolve that by bringing together the regulators in Washington with the commercial banks themselves and with the representatives from the government of Belize to address that problem. I think we're making progress, we have very limited authority to tell the correspondent banks in the US is to what to do and how to manage their accounts but we hope that together in addressing specific issues that we're able to address this very critical issue that is so important to the Belizean economy. So we are there, we are working on getting people to talk to resolve the issue."

"The more that the regulators stand the impact in Belize and the more that the Belizean banks understand what the regulators are attempting to do; that is to combat money laundering and counter-terrorism financing and so forth and these are international regulations, they are not a product of the US itself but it is US banks that are following the international regulations that everyone agrees are proper appropriate regulations. I think that the consequences of complying with the regulations will be good, good for the banks here, good for the Belizean people and good for the banks in the United States and the regulators as well. So I think that everyone is after the same objective, to have a very transparent system. So I think that in the end of the day that however the matter is resolved but it's important right now that the different stakeholders talk to one another to come up with an acceptable solution."

"I think that there's sufficient interest at all levels of government here and frankly in the United States as well not to have this economy collapse. No one wants Belize to revert to a cash economy in this modern day and age, we simply need to have a mechanism, a transparent mechanism for international trade and even retail transactions given the importance of tourism here in Belize."

We’ll keep following as CARICOM prepares to approach the United Nations and the World Trade Organization to publicized the issue on that level.