I.D.B. talks business development with Chamber of Commerce

The Inter-American Development Bank, the primary source of multilateral financing in Latin America, is partnering with the Belize Chamber of Commerce and Industry to provide solutions to development challenges within the business community.  On Monday evening at the Biltmore Plaza, entrepreneurs from across the private sector attended a presentation by representatives of IDB.  While the talk was mainly centered around the creation of business opportunities, issues including gender and tourism were also discussed.  Chief Executive Officer Kim Aikman spoke briefly about the various prospects, following the presentation.

Kim Aikman, CEO, Belize Chamber of Commerce & Industry

Kim Aikman

“I think that the opportunities are endless.  As I was saying in there, today I was at another workshop and there were forty-plus women in a room with excellent businesses that were running and they just needed a little push.  Too often we look at threshold for the ISC as being too high, but I think that if we can look at the clustering concept and coming together, three, four business, we can access these funds and we can, you know, do a value chain and move the businesses along.  So it’s a phenomenal opportunity that I think businesses should take advantage of. Gender is one of the pillars that they spoke about in there today, so I believe that the opportunities are there… Tourism, there are always opportunities.  Today, one of the businesses that was in the room that I was talking about is spa and wellness and that is tourism.  That’s exporting tourism and we were looking at how we can make the spa experience in Belize unique to Belize.  So there are always possibilities and we are looking also at climate resilience in construction, with climate resilient buildings.  So there are, we can access in Belize the funds as well.  Renewable energy is another area that we can look at for tourism.”