On October 28, 2026, Belize’s Ministry of Public Utilities unveiled a landmark $73 million capital injection plan for national power provider Belize Electricity Limited (BEL), structured entirely through the purchase of newly issued preferential shares, after the utility ruled out two more conventional funding pathways that would have placed immediate financial strain on local households. The announcement was made by the Ministry’s Chief Executive Officer Dr. Leroy Almendarez during a broadcast appearance on the popular morning program *Open Your Eyes*, where he walked listeners through the exhaustive review of BEL’s dire fiscal position that preceded the government intervention. Almendarez outlined that BEL’s leadership had initially evaluated three distinct strategies to resolve its mounting unpaid liabilities, which include overdue payments to key power suppliers such as Mexico’s Comisión Federal de Electricidad (CFE) and domestic renewable operator Hydro Belize. The first proposed solution was a direct across-the-board electricity tariff hike: with current residential and commercial rates hovering between 42 and 43 cents per kilowatt-hour, recouping the $75 million BEL required to clear its outstanding dues would have demanded a minimum 5 cent per kilowatt-hour rate increase, a policy option that government officials immediately discarded as excessively burdensome for cost-of-living strained Belizean consumers. The second potential path, securing new loans from local commercial banking institutions, was also deemed completely unfeasible: Almendarez confirmed that BEL’s existing debt levels had pushed its debt-to-repayment viability ratios far below the thresholds required for commercial lenders to approve additional financing, locking the utility out of private sector credit markets entirely. That left only the third viable option: seeking direct capital support from BEL’s largest shareholder, the Government of Belize. Under the tabled BEL Investment Bill, the state will acquire 8,138,020 newly issued preferential shares at a fixed price of $9 per share, for a total investment of roughly $73 million. Parallel to this capital injection, BEL has submitted a separate regulatory application to the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) seeking formal approval to double the existing cap on its Cost of Power Adjustment (COPA) mechanism from 5% to 10%. Almendarez emphasized that this COPA request is entirely independent of the government’s preferential share purchase, and remains under active regulatory review. The current 5% cap permits BEL to pass through a maximum 1.5 cent per kilowatt-hour adjustment to end users to offset volatile generation costs, while the proposed 10% cap would raise that maximum pass-through to 3 cents per kilowatt-hour. The CEO also noted that BEL has been forced to ramp up reliance on costly diesel-fueled power generation in recent months, which carries a production cost of roughly 80 cents per kilowatt-hour – far higher than the utility’s long-term contracted rates for hydroelectric and imported Mexican grid power. While no rolling blackouts or load shedding have been implemented to date, the spiking cost of diesel generation has drastically pushed up BEL’s average power production expenses, creating the fiscal pressure that drove the COPA adjustment request. The PUC has formally opened a public comment period for stakeholders and ordinary citizens to submit evidence-based feedback on BEL’s COPA proposal, with Almendarez noting that all submissions must include clear, documented rationales to be considered during the commission’s final deliberations. The government’s preferential share structure is designed to shore up BEL’s balance sheet and clear its immediate supplier arrears without forcing an immediate, sharp tariff spike that would exacerbate household cost burdens across Belize District and the wider nation.