If it was a secret that the faction leading the UDP at this time is battling to find favor with British banker, Lord Ashcroft, the lid on that blew off when at a recent sitting of the House of Representatives the Leader of the Opposition, Hon. Shyne Barrow, of the UDP, demanded of the Prime Minister, Hon. John Briceño, PUP, that he report on the progress of the Waterloo port proposal. Lord Ashcroft is the lead player when general elections roll around in Belize, usually as a financier of the PUP, and his Waterloo Investment Holdings group is the party behind the port proposal.
The proposal is a multimillion-dollar initiative that would improve and expand the existing Port of Belize Ltd. (PBL) so that it can handle bulk cargo with increased efficiency and accommodate the world’s largest cruise ships. The project calls for deepening a channel and increasing the size of the berthage presently at PBL, and when first presented the plans were to dump several million cubic meters of dredged material between English Caye and Turneffe. The project didn’t get out of the gate because the dumping of material from the seabed at that site was considered a direct threat to the Belize Barrier Reef, which is a UNESCO Heritage Site.
(A decade ago, concerned environmentalists, to preserve the status of the reef, fought off huge international companies that wanted to explore for oil offshore.) After its failure, Waterloo returned with new plans which called for the dumping of all dredged material near shore and onshore, but that too has not been approved.
The Leader of the Opposition wanted to know what the Prime Minister’s ministry was doing to solve the problems that were stalling the Waterloo project, which he said “if approved [would] bring tremendous economic development to Belize.” Responding to the question, PM Briceño said the fate of Lord Ashcroft’s Waterloo would be decided by the National Environmental Appraisal Committee (NEAC), and that his government would “not prejudice the process one way or the other.”
Speaking on preliminary reports by the NEAC, Minister of Sustainable Development, Climate Change & Disaster Risk Management, Hon. Orlando Habet, said that the NEAC had found that the quantity of dredged material mentioned in the new proposal did not add up to the quantity in the first proposal. The Belize Water Services Limited (BWSL) has also expressed concerns that increased dumping of material onshore, in important mangrove wetlands, would negatively impact the sewer lagoons that serve Belize City.
Back in December 2021, when it became apparent that the revised Waterloo project was having trouble getting clearance from NEAC, a Waterloo representative made the stunning charge that the group was facing stiff headwinds because it had refused to pay bribes to certain NEAC members. Waterloo reportedly offered no information to substantiate its charge. Members of the NEAC come from both government ministries and NGOs, and were any of them that unscrupulous, especially about a project that presents many serious environmental issues, their disgrace would be enormous.
Waterloo’s designs for PBL began when the company fell into receivership. That is a tale that is a tragedy to many Belizeans. In a period when the PUP, 1998-2003, was copying the privatization blueprint, the prime asset, which was developed and owned by the Belizean people, was sold to a PUP loyalist, and its management was handed over to a receiver when the loyalist couldn’t service his loans at the bank.
That PUP government of 1998-2003 went all out for privatization, and in that five-year period, prized publicly owned companies that controlled telecommunications, electricity, and water, were also sold to private entities. One of the PUP’s justifications for their wholesale embrace of the privatization philosophy was that the government needed to raise money to fuel an economy that it said had gone stagnant under a previous administration, the UDP government of 1993-1998. Many Belizeans questioned that administration’s sale of our assets, and there were outcries over excessive borrowing at interest rates that were closer to what customers get at a pawn shop than at a credit union, massive loans to individuals close to the government, and spending of the people’s money as if it were the property of the party.
According to PM Briceño, it is the NEAC that stands between Ashcroft’s Waterloo and its plans to host the world’s most massive ships. The port has to be developed, there must be progress, and the important questions are how that progress will proceed, how it will impact the environment, and who will benefit from it. There are those who believe that our development will be best served if we yield totally to the magic of the marketplace. For them it matters not that there is already a cruise port well under construction at Stake Bank, which is in close proximity to the proposed Waterloo. Intriguingly, Waterloo has reportedly expressed its disapproval of a third proposed cruise port, Port of Magical Belize, just a couple miles away from it.
If after careful study of the Environmental Impact Assessment report the NEAC finds that the Waterloo port proposal is sound, many will not be content about Ashcroft and his group getting the green light. That’s because there’s some bad history here. Lord Ashcroft and his group will spend some money, there will be progress, select elites will make a mint, but many of the people in the area they are “developing” will be forced out for little or nothing, just as it happened with small BTL shareholders when he got control of that company. No one forgets the projects that were to come to Belize when, acting as a “Good Samaritan”, he helped negotiate the exorbitant price we paid for the reacquisition of BTL. Seven years later we haven’t seen one such project.
Bitten before, and badly, by this foreign investor whose behavior very often reminds us of the time when Europeans here held a whip in their hands, many Belizeans would prefer that PBL be nationalized. The UDP claims they considered it, but vacillated during their 13 years in government.
One argument against local ownership is financing. The fact is that if the workers at PBL and the GOB took it over, and they were given the same support the government gives foreign investors, they could easily attract the financing to improve the important facility. If PBL was nationalized, the profits from the company would stay in Belize, and we would be assured that our environment and people would be treated with proper respect. Our history with big foreign investors is that they have little regard for local authorities, and our flora and fauna.
The present government is not swimming in cash, and some leaders in that camp will be in the cheer section for NEAC approval of the project because it would solve some of our immediate financial problems. The NEAC will rule after completing its due diligence, and it could make a pronouncement that the project is sound. But from the evidence, it is clear that Waterloo is not our best option.