Minister Coye Says Mexico Presents Huge Market for Belize

Chris Coye

Minister Coye believes Belize has not been maximizing the ability to market our goods and services closer to home and that we ought to double our efforts toward that end.

Chris Coye, Minister of State, Finance

“We have not been focusing for export in our neighbouring countries and when we look at the size of that market – Mexico alone dwarfs the Caribbean as a market many-fold. And I think that’s where our Minister of Agriculture has been spending a lot of time in trying to see how a market like that can be developed. So we don’t have to look to Africa or East Asia. We have markets right around us that we can access and more than satisfy what we can produce. Belize is not a big country from an agricultural standpoint – in fact a very small country. So Mexico along would satisfy our produce. In tourism, we can be broader in who we seek to attract and how we maximize the dollar opportunity from an occupancy standpoint. How do we get a higher return for the number of rooms that exist in the country and who would pay more to come to Belize. And then we look at those markets. The US obviously has been one. Have we delved into it enough to say that we have maximized our opportunity from the US?”