Imports to Belize Continue to Exceed Exports

Moving now to imports and exports, sugar and animal feed drove up the total domestic exports in January. According to S.I.B’s data, earnings from sugar grew by a notable two point five million dollars in the period, for a total of three point eight million dollars in sugar exports. Also, animal feed exports were up by a million dollars.  The bad news in the export market is the constant decline in crude petroleum exports.  Overall, exports for the month of January totalled twenty million dollars, while imports for the same period totalled one hundred and ninety million dollars. But the S.I.B. points out that these measurements look at goods and not services, even though Belize has a very service oriented economy.

Diana Trejo, Acting Director General, S.I.B

Diana Trejo

“I think if you would have been looking at the trends of imports and exports over the past several years, you will see that imports have consistently been quite higher that exports. I think where we are right now, imports is somewhere around two to three times the value of exports. One thing to remember is that we are talking here only merchandise trade, so these are only goods. We are not a country that produces a whole lot of goods basically. As you see, when we did the GDP presentation, two thirds of our economy is based on the production of services. So, merchandise trade doesn’t take into account the export of services, things like tourism and other types of services that would generate some form of export income or foreign exchange. So, there is that. That is something we ourselves don’t measure at this time. But, yes certainly, that sort of imbalance necessarily means that we either need to import less, which I think the productive sector is highly dependent on importation. One of our biggest sectors in tertiary, wholesale and retail sector is almost entirely dependent on imports. So, the other way to close whatever gap there is for total imports, in terms of goods and services would be to expand our production of services.”