Business forum to strengthen ties between Belize/Barbados
The Barbados Coalition of Services Industries has partnered with the Belize Chamber of Commerce and Industries and Beltraide to host a services trade mission to strengthen intra regional trade. The representatives from Barbados are in the jewel and today begin a series of meetings and other networking opportunities. At a business forum held at the Radisson this morning, over a dozen service providers made presentations about what their companies have to offer. A News Five crew was there to find out what the mission means to both countries.
Ms. Michelle Hustler, Barbados Coalition of Service Industries
“The purpose of the mission is to introduce Barbadian service providers to the Belize market and helping them to access opportunities and the strategic alliances necessary in exporting their services to this market. So we’re hoping to help Barbadians meet Belize business persons and form the types of relationships necessary to enable mutual trade flows.”
Delahnie Bain
“How are you going to do this?”
Michelle Hustler
“We’re hosting this morning a business forum, which features presentations on doing business in Barbados, doing business in Belize, the importance of strategic alliances, services networking and so forth. Tomorrow we’ll be hosting a networking reception and throughout the whole mission for tomorrow and Wednesday, there will be business to business meetings, where the Barbadian service companies who are taking part in this mission will meet on a one on one basis with the Belize business community. The service companies who are involved in this mission are change management companies, marketing companies, public relations, we have interior design, we have production services for television and multimedia services as well, vocal production company as well.”
Michael Swift, Executive Director, Beltraide
“When you have a local business expanding into other regions and other countries, certainly it holds well for them in terms of their revenue flows. So we’re expecting to have significant partnership agreements coming out of all this and we’re also expecting that our local business service providers take hold of opportunities to expand their business into, not only Barbados but hopefully into other CARICOM regions. One of the biggest deterrents is that generally businesses are not aware of what are the opportunities. So it is our job to ensure that we pass on the relevant information to our local business people in terms of the opportunities that may exist in Barbados, in Jamaica, Trinidad and elsewhere in terms of service.”
News Five also spoke to representatives from two of the service providers from Barbados to find out what they hope to achieve through the trade mission.
Selma Green, Executive Director, Youth Entrepreneurship Scheme
“We work with young people so you have to be between eighteen and thirty-five years old and in terms of helping young people achieve their goals of creating profitable and sustainable businesses, we offer entrepreneurial development training, we offer technical assistance, we offer mentoring, there’s an accounting and marketing program.”
Delahnie Bain
“Will you be working with any of the organizations or NGO’s in Belize?”
Selma Green
“Well, what I’m hoping to do is to work with the Ministry of Youth to see what broad policy frameworks they have in terms of development and empowerment of the young people. I know I’m going to be meeting with your Youth Business Trust which I assume lends to young people who want to start their businesses. I know that the Young Women’s Christian Association recently got funding for a project and they wanted to talk to me in terms of how they can use this funding to help develop whatever businesses they have. So I’m very interested in meeting with them and I’m and I’m hoping that I also get the opportunity to meet with any other organizations that are interested.”
Carmetta Wiggins, Marketing Advisor, Asphalt Processors Inc.
“Asphalt Processors is actually a manufacturing company. We manufacture asphalt products, the penetration bit trimmings. Also we do emulsions and cutbacks. We also manufacture what we call a heavy vacuum gas oil and this is used in industrial engines and hopefully in Belize, we’re looking forward to establish alliances or partnerships with a company here to manufacture emulsions. We had our first contact with Sol Company in which we had bid on some businesses in Belize and from that bid we thought that this might be a good opportunity here to establish some alliance to do some manufacturing.”
Persons interested in taking advantage of the trade mission and working with the coalition can contact Launchpad Consulting.
