The idea is to create two new tax regimes while eliminating the possibility of joining any of the current 10 regimes. This change doesn’t affect us currently as issuing of new ZOLITUR permits stopped years ago. The Secretary of the Presidency is correct in the video published: they aren’t eliminating the existing benefits, just any future possibility to affiliate.

In the justification for the proposal of this new law, the legislator also cited corrupt practices by all the regimes. Among other abuses stated, were that under ZOLITUR benefits. There are five companies that import twice the amount of fuel the island can consume.

I would like to know where they got the numbers for this statement. We haven’t had a proper census in years on the island, just an electoral one. I want to see the compiled data for what 1 person consumes in fuel according to this study for the Tax Law proposal.

Here is data I want them to show in this tax proposal. Honduras is projected to generate $600 million in tourism revenue in 2023. With two million visitors expected, vast majority of the income is coming from the Bay Islands.

One third of revenue generated by Roatan cruise ships ends on the mainland and stays there. On the other hand cruise ships that dock here, deplete our resources: our water, roads and beaches.

This could open the door to a spike in kidnappings.

As islanders and resident ex-pats we pay plenty in local and federal taxes. On the other hand, what central government invests back here is very little to sustain the natural resources and protect the tourism industry that produces this income for them.

Personally I think that when it comes to tourism in Honduras, Bay Islands leads the way. When it comes to remembering the island for projects from central government well let’s just say we are far from their top priority.

The new law also proposes to eliminate the bank confidentiality to allow the tax offices to freely have access to our bank records without a court order. Every employee that works at the tax office will have the ability to access your bank information. As information about individual cash assets will become accessible this could open the door to a spike in kidnappings like 20 years ago.

Here is where it gets fun for the islands and the field of real estate. The Honduran lawmakers are pushing to eliminate bearer share corporations. This is a problem, as we islanders pay more capital gains tax here than anywhere else in Honduras. We pay on actual sale value and they pay on cadastral value or an assessed value.

We are allegedly charged only 4% instead of the 10% that is paid on the mainland. We pay that tax regardless of affiliation to ZOLITUR for the benefits. I believe that ZOLITUR is doing a fine job spending our money on its projects in sanitation and infrastructure.

The new law makes it sound like we don’t pay any taxes to the government at all. The companies under the ZOLITUR regime still must collect the taxes and pay them to the government. An audit to weed out those abusing the ZOLITUR system is needed, I’m all for that.

Roatan started out as a self-sufficient island around 5,000-7,000 BC. There were no industries to speak of and the Paya Indians grew their own food and had enough fish to never worry about hunger. The Mayan traders would sail in their canoes to bring them cacao beans and some metal tools to trade for dried fish, shells, and pottery.

Then in the 1580s the island become a hub of the ‘pillage industry.’ Hundreds of pirates lived here and careened their boats in preparation for raids on the Spanish ships carrying silver and goods from nearby Trujillo and Puerto Bello. That industry came crashing down in 1650, and the Paya were deported by the Spanish to Rio Dulce, leaving the island unpopulated for almost a century-and-a-half.

As slavery was abolished in the British Empire, hundreds of Cayman islanders came to Roatan to begin their lives anew. It took another 140 years of quiet, self-sustaining life before the coconut and banana fruit industry motivated islanders to plant thousands of trees and to sell the fruit to Standard Fruit company ships visiting the island. As that banana boom wound down in the 1960s, the shrimp and lobster industry arrived on Roatan. There were lucrative contracts with Red Lobster plenty of jobs and stressful shrimp-boat loans from Honduran banks to pay.

That fishing industry lasted until about the early 2010s when cheaper, farmed raised shrimp drove down the price of wild shrimp and the lobsters “got smaller” and harder to catch.

The tourism industry on the island began with dive resorts such as Anthony’s Key Resort and Coco View springing up in the 1970s. The sailing industry, created courtesy to Reagan era tax shelters, discovered the island in 1980s. Brick Bay Resort or CSY (Caribbean Sailing Yacht) was hopping and bopping with beautiful sailing vessels. The tax shelters went away and so did the sailboats.

Drug smuggling industry had discovered Roatan in early 1980’s.

The construction industry has been a growing employer on the island since the first bulldozer was shipped to the island in 1970s. There are now a dozen construction companies tearing down hills, filling in gullies, and constructing metal and cement buildings all over the island. The construction industry is perhaps the main driver of migration to the island form mainland Honduras. If you have a heart beat and two hands you can get a job on a Roatan construction site.

The drug smuggling industry had discovered Roatan in early 1980s, just as the Iran Contra cocaine smuggling operation was winding up to the deep state kabaal dispatched CIA Et al to move cocaine to the waterfront condos of Miami and street corners of south LA. The industry brought employment, money, addiction and violence to Roatan.

The smuggling spiked in 2009 right after the coup against president Mel Zelaya. While the ‘War on drugs’ continues, so do the smuggling operations that supply millions of US and Canadian cocaine addicts. At least Roatan’s international airport has gotten too busy to bring in drug planes as it did six or seven years ago.

After the first cruise ship visited Roatan on September 5, 1989, there was no turning back. The Ocean Spirit was the biggest cruise ship in the world: it was nearly 500 feet long, weighed 20,000 tons and brought in 360 passengers, a fraction of the 7,000 passenger behemoths that are bound for Roatan visits currently. On the horizon there is the possibility of a third cruise ship dock in Port Royal.

There is yet another industry player eyeing the island: all-inclusive hotels, much less focused on diving. Sandals, Wyndham, Hilton, and Inter Continental are all said to be exploring possibilities on the island and development is inevitable. This growth will likely require expansion of the Roatan’s international airport leading to additional filling in of the reef. Roatan appears to be, yet again, meeting the supply for others’ addictions at its own expense: European addiction to gold, American addiction to cocaine, and American addiction to cheap, all-you can-eat, holidaying.

Mexican Multinational Expands Roatan’s Cruise Ship Dock a mid Controversy and Exposes Island’s Double Standards

In 2018 ITM Group has purchased a majority stake in the Port of Roatan cruise ship terminal from Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. ITM begun work on second berth and has planes to open it at the end of 2019. IMT is expanding by 500% the area of attractions “adventure islands” with restaurants, aviary, rays, kayaking, for cruise ship passengers. An investment of around $30 million.

While the money are jobs are attractive to many, some see hidden dangers of the expansion. “The people are for dock expansion, but not for ‘Disney Land’ expansion they are doing,” says Aleynzka Grant Watler, Constellation bight resident. “We contacted SERNA in December and they still haven’t sent an inspector.” Indeed, the people of Roatan and Constellation Bight have been left in the dark. “We don’t know the shape, size positioning of the island,” said Lean about the Port of Roatan non-transparent filling in of land in Constellation Bight.

There are numerous concerns about the damage to the coral, change of tides and currents in Constellation Bight and closing of a public swimming beach. “SERNA should not have issued permit to remove the coral,” says Francis Lean, executive director of the Marine Park. Lean is not alone in seeing the double standard of life on Roatan. “Environmental concerns and agencies are only a front to control which projects get through and which ones don’t,” said Kaveh Lahijani, owner of Little French Key that employs 80 full time people. “There are far greater forces at play than proper permitting, processing and protection of natural resources and environment of Roatán.”

Cruise ship tourism boom of the last ten years has strained Roatan’s infrastructure to its limits.

Despite numerous requests by Paya Magazine, Port of Roatan management, nor ITM has not answered any questions regarding their port expansion. “The community is against the project,” says Lean, but “this is a done deal unless the community stands up against this right now.”

Locals indeed are speaking up, but no one is listening. “We don’t want this Disneyland,” says Alex Watler, the secretary of the Constellation Bight patronato. Watler feels the community has been sidelined, sacrifices for personal interests of politicians and big companies. “We contacted the governor, fiscalia, minister of tourism, Ministerio Publico, BICA. They didn’t even want to see us, or made empty promises,” says Watler.

Constellation Bight is beautiful bight, but the constant turning of giant cruise ship propellers has damaged much of the coral in the area. While the environment has suffered, people have made profit from property values and excursions offered nearby. Marco Galindo Sr., owner of Gumbalimba Park that caters to cruise shippers, says that the property values have already doubled and “Now they will multiply a thousand percent.”

Watler sees double standards in how islanders and big business like ITM are treated. “A man had three fish pots [traps] here [in Constellation Bight] and Marine Park came in so fast and confiscated the traps. But now when there is so much damage, they don’t do a thing,” says Watler.

“I even told Jerry [Roatan’s Mayor Jerry Hynds]: you guys are going little guys like Little French Cay [for their lack of environmental permit] but do nothing about the damage done here.” While Little French Cay, a tourist destination several miles away from the port, is a fraction of size of Port of Roatan it gathered wrath of Municipal and mainland government in form of inspections, raids and fines. “This area [Port of Roatan] would not be open to general local public and would only really benefit the foreign investors intending to keep the cruise ship passengers and their dollars within the confines of the port,” said about the Port of Roatan expansion Lahijani.

The second Port of Roatan dock is planned to accommodate larger, Oasis size cruise ships like the Allure of the Seas. “These cruise ships are the future,” says Marco Galindo Sr. about the megaship bringing not 3,000-4,000 passengers but 7,000.

Some other businessmen who operate out of the existing Port of Roatan dock also feel that bigger ships and more passengers will leave plenty of cruise-shippers to leave the port and spend money on their attractions on Roatan proper. “I employ 20 people and 20 families are dependent on the cruise ship tourist,” says Vidal Villeda, 53, who owns Chocolate factory stands in two Roatan cruise ship ports and a chocolate factory center in West End.

Villeda is renting a three meter by three-meter stand at the cruise ship dock for $100 a cruses ship day. Villeda says that his rent hasn’t gone up since the Mexican conglomerate took over the Port of Roatan except for the maintenance fee of $50 a month. ‘They are brining bigger boats,” Villeda says about the Mexican conglomerate. “The more cruise ship tourist will come the better.”

The uncontrolled cruise ship tourism boom of the last ten years has strained Roatan’s infrastructure to its limits, attracted tens-of-thousands of mainland labor migrants and caused environmental damage to reef and soil that is impossible to enumerate in dollars. “If we keep destroying trees, it’s a matter of time and we will be like Haiti,” says Galindo Sr. who remains pessimistic about the long-term growth of the island. “In 15-20 years’, time we will be charging islanders Lps. 500 to hug a tree.”

Roatan’s love affair with fast growth and cruise shippers doesn’t only end in Port of Roatan or Mahogany Bay. The Santos Guardiola is financing a study to find out the best location for a cruise ship terminal in New Port Royal. This would bring a third cruise ship terminal to the island. “Santos Guardiola has a lot to offer at the East End of the island,” says Galindo. “It’s going to happen. It [Roatan] will be a cruise ship island,” says Galindo.

Relying on only one industry for the sustainment of the island is like putting all one’s eggs in one basket. Twenty years ago, Roatan was an island with several industries: fishing industry, seafood packing industry, dive industry, construction industry and cruise ship was yet another industry. “If cruise ships leave, we will starve to death,” says Galindo Sr.