BELTRAIDE looks for export policy

As Belizean businesses grapple to deal with high operational costs and intense global competition, the ability to tap profitably into world markets might mean the difference between success and failure. In that context, over the next three days, local government agencies and private sector representatives are meeting with their counterparts from the Caribbean to produce a national export strategy document. According to officials from the Belize Trade and Investment Development Service, BELTRAIDE, the plan will focus on development and capacity building in local industries to enter export markets across the globe. Today participants from Uruguay, the Dominican Republic, St. Vincent, Grenada, Panama and Trinidad and Tobago met in Belize City to brainstorm. Belize’s point man on the project, Roberto Harrison, says the idea will encourage businesses to compete with producers in the United States, CARICOM and as far away as Europe.

Roberto Harrison, Export Promotion Officer, BELTRAIDE
?We have been trying to export a lot of products, but the strategy is supposed to put in perspective the commodity and the market so that we then target our resources towards those commodities and those markets. The priority sectors that was mentioned earlier focuses on furniture manufacturing, tourism, agro-processing, agriculture in traditional areas mainly sugar and citrus.?

Janelle Chanona
?Where do you go from here from a technical standpoint to get this information out to the public??

Roberto Harrison
?The strategy is a process and it?s a process that involves the private sector because they are the ones that do business; the public sector is there as the facilitator and we think that within the next six to nine months we should be able to develop that strategy mainly from inputs coming from the private sectors, as I mentioned earlier, they are the ones that move business, so that once the strategy is developed then we should be able to move with the areas recommended by the strategy.?

Lourdes Smith, Director, BELTRAIDE
?The first two days of this meeting is a regional briefing for the total of five countries that are embarking and developing a national export strategy. There are very few countries in the world that have a national export strategy developed and I?m told that there are even fewer countries where they are actually implementing it. But we intend to make sure that we go the full mile on that.?

Joining Roberto Harrison on Belize’s core strategy team are Abdala Bedran from the private sector and Government representative Sergio Garcia from the Ministry of Agriculture. The National Export Strategy is being coordinated by BELTRAIDE in conjunction with the International Trade Center and the United Nations Center for Trade and Development.