BELIZE-World Bank to help Belize further develop the blue economy

BELMOPAN, Belize, CMC – The World Bank is developing a project for Belize aimed at assisting the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) country further develop its blue economy, a senior World Bank official has said.

World Bank Vice President for Latin America and the Caribbean Region, Carlos Felipe Jaramillo, has been discussing with various stakeholders here, adding that the Washington-based financial institution wants to help countries that aim to eliminate poverty and improve their development.

“We’ve been making inroads in this partnership, and right now, we have engagement in health, which arose out of the pandemic. We now have support in agriculture. Yesterday, I visited these agricultural farmers and tried to see how we can help them more with better technology and investments.

“And we also have engagements in helping the government with their fiscal and debt management. We have done a public expenditure review with a special focus on areas of education and health where, you know, we hope that we can continue to be useful, and maybe very importantly is the blue economy.”

Jaramillo said, “We have a project that we are designing that we hope will come to maturity early next year, which is about blue cities and how to help Belize continue to consolidate this blue economy.”

Minister of State in the Ministry of Finance, Chris Coye, said Belize wants to increase its energy capacity significantly.

“Now, we’re looking at not only the blue cities program but also the energy battery energy storage. I think it’s no secret the challenges in the energy sector that Belize has, partly of our own doing, in that we have grown far faster than was projected.

“And so we are meeting peak demands that are impacted by the supply or the constraints of supply that we have locally and from Mexico. So we must move quickly to improve the energy available for our local demands.

“The battery energy storage project that we’re looking at should attract or should bring between 40 and 50 megawatts capacity,” Coye told the Government Press Office.