Business Bureau hosts expo

Belizean entrepreneurs will brush up on the tricks of the business trade when they attend the first of what is slated to become the annual Belizean Producers Convention and Exhibition, BelPro ConEx 2000. Organised by the Belize Business Bureau, the event opens Friday at the Belize City Centre and continues through Sunday. President of the Bureau, Lourdes Smith, says the three-day expo is aimed at encouraging Belizeans to become more enterprising.

Lourdes Smith, President, Belize Business Bureau

“We need to convene all the Belizean products, we want to work inline with the “Buy Belize” campaign that the government had embarked on. It has been a success because I get reports that the shopping in Chetumal has decreased and we want to promote the Belizean product. We’re also having seminars to help the Belizean businesses to maybe market their product better, to develop their business plans for joint ventures, when they want to present to an investor and also to prepare business plans for financial assistance. So we have the marketing, the competitiveness and standards so they can improve their product, the financial and technical assistance, the one on the business plan and the steps that should be taken when you want to export a product, what you need to know, what you need to do. The product development and also what technical assistance is available for businesses to tap into, what programmes are in place. So we?ll have different presenters for this seminar and they?ll be running one after the other starting from Friday morning at 10:00. You can call us for a schedule, and the good things about these seminars, is that we are offering it for just fifty dollars and you can sign up and that gives you a pass to go into anyone or all.”

Smith says the event affords the public the opportunity to see and purchase an array of Belizean-made goods, ranging from small handicrafts to massive pieces of wooden furniture.