Sustainable Tourism Plan Needed If Everyone is to Benefit

Protecting Belize’s pristine beauty, something unique only to us, is something that Minister of Tourism, Anthony Mahler agreed with Prime Minister Briceño about. At the core of that protection, Mahler says is the Sustainable Tourism Master Plan that will help small businesses too.

Anthony Mahler

Anthony Mahler, Minister of Tourism

“The entire Tourism product in Belize is made up of, I would say, ninety-five percent of small, medium enterprises, even micro enterprises. So we have to continue to focus on helping them through these difficult times, but we also have to attract bigger developments so that we can expand the tourism product. We have people coming in from all levels of business wanting to come into Belize to invest.”

Marion Ali

“And how do we protect our own locals so that we don’t get proposals with packages that (say) listen, these big investors want to come and invest but you would have to agree to them bringing their own people here to do the smaller jobs. How do we..”

Anthony Mahler

“Well I think you will see the smile on my face because that’s a loaded question, right, but I think we have to create a spirit in Belize of entrepreneurship. We have to allow access to capital.  That’s one of the major problems in Belize, that we don’t have affordable capital. I know that interest rates have come down but they are still higher than what people can get outside and so if the private sector is to thrive, they have to have the wherewithal to invest in projects that can reap the returns for further growth and development. We also have to understand scale in Belize; how do we scale up. Far too often we have – and I hope I don’t get in trouble for this – when somebody makes ten plates of rice and beans ih good but when the business get too much and ih goh to fifteen and twenty, the quality goes down. So we have to understand scale. How do we scale up in terms of the different businesses that we have here in Belize.”