Small Business Grants Programme Booming – CitCo Gets Ready for a Second Round!
Bernard Wagner
The Belize City Council is getting ready to launch the second tranche of its Belize Accelerator Programme. One month ago, the programme was launched to provide training and equipment to help Belize City businesses get off the ground. The council’s aim is to create employment opportunities for those who have been negatively impacted by COVID-19. Today, we got an update from Mayor Bernard Wagner about how the programme is coming along.
Bernard Wagner, Belize City Mayor
“Those businesses are doing pretty well. It is the first tranche went pretty well. We are in the second tranche now, we are getting those people acclimated to the new environment, the new normal, that of being your own boss. We continue to get tremendous support from the business community and from our donors and sponsors of our programme. So, that programme we see as a long term fix. We are tired of the short term fixes in our society. We continue to evaluate those programmes and wherever possible we try to channel business to those entities in terms of if the council is having a social and need food, we would channel the business that would be derived from that activity to those businesses. We have this back to school hair cut that we want to have as a city and we will be channeling those business to the young barbers who came through our programme. The guy that cleans the yard and has the weed whacker – if we have abandoned lots, properties, we channel those business to that individual as well. It is all about ensuring that those entrepreneurs don’t fail.”
Andrea Polanco
“In terms of the second tranche, what’s the value of that?”
Bernard Wagner
“The second tranche will be in the same neighborhood, of twenty-five to thirty thousand in equipment, supplies, the ground work in ensuring that they get in the formal system. So, what we are trying to do is to get these businesses out of the informal system and formalize them completely.”
Andrea Polanco
“So, you will be looking for new entrepreneurs for the second tranche?”
Bernard Wagner
“New entrepreneurs, again. For this batch, we have been getting in a lot of applications, very good applications but it is a process and we don’t want the entrepreneurs to be just passing through the training and selling the idea.”
