GOVERNMENT RESPONDS TO CHAMBER RELEASE

The Government of Belize today fired back at the Belize Chamber of Commerce for its stance on the takeover of Belize Electricity Limited. A government press release says the Chamber is wrong on its opinion that the move will hurt investor confidence and thus feels obliged to both correct and condemn the Chamber. The release says that the suggestion that there was an abuse of Parliamentary procedure in the summoning of a special sitting of the National Assembly, is patent nonsense and sounds like a politically inspired charge. Next, the official release says, the Chamber alleges that the Prime Minister went back on his promise to give BEL twenty days. GOB says there was never any such promise and that the Prime Minister had said that he had been assured by BEL that the last 4 million dollars given by Government would have bought around three weeks grace. As was made clear in the House presentation, though, it turned out that BEL was not addressing the all important question of non-payment to BELCOGEN. The lengthy government release addresses a number of other issues including the Chamber's assertion that Government acquired BEL as a way of solving a dispute with Fortis. This the official release says is an outright lie and the Chamber well knows that as there was never any dispute with GOB.

LOVEFM