Stakeholders Meet to Boost Belize’s Economic Development

Osmond Martinez

Officials from several ministries, the Development Finance Corporation and the Central Bank of Belize as well as stakeholders in academia, will meet on Friday to put forth an outline for how to boost economic development in Belize.  News Five spoke with C.E.O. in the Ministry of Economic Development, Doctor Osmond Martinez about the range of issues that will be examined Friday.

Dr. Osmond Martinez, C.E.O., Ministry of Economic Development

“The objective of it is to start now the medium-term strategic plan, the discussion, to put forward the main pillars, which are one, to enable a friendly environment for investors, two, to reduce or eradicate corruption within the Government, three, to put a proper plan to reduce poverty.  Then to introduce science and technology, to enhance exports and reduce imports, social protection inclusion and digital transformation.  Every dollar that is being spent is taxpayer dollars and we need to protect that investment. Taxpayer’s money has to be protected.  The first thing that we’re looking at to eradicate poverty is to improve the education system. There has to be education reform. The second one is that we need a healthy nation.  We have around forty-four thousand businesses that fall within the MSMEs (Micro, Small, Medium Enterprises). If each one of them would generate one job per year, we will be generating forty-four thousand jobs, so we need to empower, we need to enable an environment for the MSMEs hire in order to move forward.   We are focusing on assisting the MSMEs and that is very important because the MSMEs should be the backbone of Belize’s economy.”