Regional Customs Brokers Meet in Belize for Conference

Delroy Fairweather

Customs brokers and clerks from countries that make up CARICOM are in Belize for their first ever Caribbean Association of Customs Brokers Conference. The event will take place on Saturday at the Best Western Belize Biltmore Plaza Hotel. President of the Association, Delroy Fairweather and Customs Broker from Suriname, Roestam Samoendeer briefed us on what they hope to take away from the event.

Delroy Fairweather, President, Caribbean Association of Customs Brokers

“One of the other aspects of the conference that we’re looking at is the actual difficulties to have people travel within the region, like for example, most of our folks had to travel through Miami and of course we saw what happened this week. They ended up stuck for a couple days in Miami. Luckily they could have gotten flights out. On the agenda we have – basically we’re looking at utilizing Jamaica as our regional hub to for Belize especially to start moving goods within the CARICOM. We have a contingent here from Jamaica and we’ll definitely explore options as to getting goods into Jamaica and from there these goods can actually start moving into the smaller islands without having to go through Miami and come back down to the Caribbean, which has an associated cost with it.”

Roestam Samoendeer

Roestam Samoendeer, Customs Broker, Suriname

“Not all the agreements within the CARICOM have been implemented as yet within our country and we are looking forward because we would like to have all advantages. For example, ICT, some of the ICT products, now is the time for digitalized stuff. So things which are produced within the CARICOM come into our country, there should be no barriers for having them imported.”