I.D.B. grants $1 million toward trade promotion

A signing took place in Belize City today for a technical cooperation project to boost the nation’s trade and investment. That effort involves a grant of almost a million Belize dollars from the Inter-American Development Bank. Signing on behalf of Government was Minister of Budget Management, Ralph Fonseca, while the bank’s representative in Belize, Hugo Souza, did the honours for the I.D.B. The two-year project will be executed by BELTRAIDE. Fonseca says there will be a team put in place to monitor the performance of the project, which focuses on three areas: export promotion, investment promotion, and institutional strengthening.

Ralph Fonseca, Minister of Budget Management

“Quite a bit of the resources will be directed toward the resources that we have in Belize already, that is, companies that are involved in the productive sector that have products which we believe could be improved, whether it is through packaging or whether its through better marketing, and also identifying markets outside of Belize for those products that are here in Belize. We’ve pushed, for instance, the Ministry of Agriculture has been very successful with peppers, for instance, but we’re shipping out peppers as peppers. We have Marie Sharpe who’s very successful with her products; maybe there are other products out there that could take the market very easily if it were packaged properly and if it was produced efficiently.”