BCCI Says Supply Chain Issues Not a Problem Just Yet

News Five also spoke to Vice President at the Belize Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Marcello Blake, on what the business community is saying about the state of the global supply chain as we enter the holiday season.

Marcello Blake

Marcello Blake, VP, BCCI

“At this point our members have not reach out indicating anything to that effect, that in fact they are being impacted just yet. However, if the situation prolongs we can anticipate that there may be some impact to Belize. When we look at what is happening there, while we had our members on our BP show last week, we were discussing the same matter on a global scale. What was highlighted in that discussion was that, trading in the region, CARICOM, Central America, U.S. was minimally impacted by the global trend. What we say is that a lot of the products come out of Europe and Asia where they were issues being faced there, both from a sourcing stand point and its availability to the shipping and shipping lines. As you mention shelves, what we can accept that in some cases we are seeing fewer brands of certain products on the shelves. So, some of your preferred brands may not necessarily be available every time you got to the shelves. And, those are all impacts coming from not only shipping, but also the supply and demand aspect where our members are searching or trying to bring in certain products, but that product is not available to get into country as they would want. The other thing there is you also have to consider the cost of bringing products in. While we spoke about the congestion in California, quite a bit of our products come out of Europe and Asia and the shipping cost is going through the roof. So that also contributed to price increases. But it also has an element, where we can try and agitate with government to consider some kind of relief, which is the freight charge that is included in the way duties are calculated.”