Francis Fonseca, Minister of Foreign Affairs
"Well, again, let me first make it very clear that we have received no official formal notice of the cancellation of the, MCC program. But obviously we have seen reports of that It appears likely again, this is a matter Prime Minister Briceno raised with Secretary Rubio and he again pledged and he is in fact the, the chair of the MCC. I think the new administration reconfigured the board and I think as I understand it, the Secretary of State is the chairman of the MCC on this new structure. So he said that, you know, he would look into the matter and find out exactly what the situation was with in terms of Belize. So we will have to wait and see there. But yes, we obviously were disappointed. I am disappointed. Belize has done a lot of work, we've spent, I think, more than two years preparing, working very closely with our MCC colleagues. You know, it's not something that Belize went looking for the MCC funds came from the US government. They're the ones who identified Belize, selected Belize They're the ones who said Belize you're on the right track in terms of governance reform. In terms of economic reform, you're on the right track. We want to help you, we want to support you. We want to work with you to identify key areas of constraints to national development. So we work together. We identify those two critical areas education and energy as two constraints to Belize's development. And then we together work on developing the compacts, the actual compact agreements and documents. One for education, one for energy. So a lot of time, a lot of energy, a lot of effort, went into this work more than, as I said, more than two and a half years or so. Obviously, when, you know, when something like that, is, is brought to an end, abruptly, without a proper explanation. Then you're very disappointed. You're very disappointed."