Bze and Guat launch new trade negotiations

The Governments of Belize and Guatemala today made the first steps towards enhanced trade and investment relations. According to officials, based on “requests, suggestions and strong pressures” from the private sectors on both sides of the border, formal negotiations are scheduled to begin in early February with the intent of finalizing what is being termed a partial scope agreement. Through that agreement, Belize and Guatemala would trade specific goods and services, with safeguards implemented to address any market distortions and facilitate the settlement of disputes. This afternoon, Belize’s Minister of Foreign Trade, Eamon Courtenay and Guatemala’s Minister of Economy, Marcio Cuevas Quezada signed a joint communiqué to formally initialize negotiations. Minister Courtenay says the ideas on the table include expansions in the areas of tourism, archaeological and historical sites and the exploration of joint ventures between businessmen and women from Belize and Guatemala.

Eamon Courtenay, Minister of Foreign Trade, Belize

?In our preliminary discussions spoke about the possibility of having what we call creative rules of origin so that something can go from Belize in a particular state go to a Guatemalan very efficient factory, build on it in the value and let it come back to Belize and export to CARICOM as a Belize product and vice versa. There may be some things here; for example we were talking this afternoon about tilapia. You do know we have a very big tilapia farm in Belize maybe something can be done here with a Guatemalan investor and then take it over to Guatemala as a Belize product or as a Guatemalan product for export through Central America.?

So what the intention is to build on the trade that is already taking place that is outside of any formal regime and the same thing in services. As you know, there are at least one–if not–two Guatemalan International Banks in Belize already. So the international financial services industry is another area where we expect to see some growth in services in the years to come.?

Marcio Cuevas Quezada, Minister of Economy, Guatemala

?We are looking here at how we can have some specific place of votes of the existing commercial issue between our two countries and how we can solve the problems that they are facing now in order to have a fit trade facilitation between these products and how we can increase the list of products in order of the necessities and the needs and the opportunities that are in the markets through the petitions of the private sectors on both sides.?

The first round of trade negotiations between Belize and Guatemala will be held on February seventh in Guatemala City.