Government Approves First National Investment Policy & Strategy

Coming off the heels of the National Investment Summit last November, the government has now approved, in collaboration with BELTRAIDE and the Investment, Policy and Compliance Unit, Belize’s first National Investment Policy and Strategy. The policy and strategy is to position Belize as a competitive, robust, and viable investment hub in Central America and the Caribbean by the year 2030. This would be in alignment with Horizon 2030 and the Growth and Sustainability Development Strategy. There are nine main pillars that the policy underscores, according to BELTRAIDE’s Executive Director, Doctor Leroy Almendarez.

Dr. Leroy Almendarez

Dr. Leroy Almendarez, Executive Director, BELTRAIDE

“Each pillar will have its own implementation or its own coordinating team because its extensive work. So, for example, we have pillar one, which talks about the development of an integrated national strategy for promoting investment. The lead for that one is BELTRAIDE because BELTRAIDE is the national investment promotion agency, but it cannot do it alone, and so therefore it includes the Ministry of Finance, Belize Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Economic Development Council, the Investment Policy and Compliance Unit. So just for that one alone, there are certain things that we have to work on. One has to do with ethical service of the government and E-Governance. That’s very important because we’re talking about transparency. The regulatory framework, we have investors come in sometimes, they might say we have a minority shareholder, will I be protected? The answer is yes because there’s a recourse within the courts so that is something that will be there. Education, because skilled developments – so opportunity for upscaling of your skills to make you even more competitive – that is something that we’re also focusing on, and that’s where we’ll include the Ministry of Education. Fostering economic diplomacy: we have embassies established in different parts of the world and they’re strategically placed because what it means is that your embassy’s presence there should be to generate investments. But they don’t work alone. We work together. So what we can do is, whatever country it may be, that those opportunities are created with every handshake, every meeting, we can see what derives from that. Once this is fully implemented, it’s going to create the kind of environment where doing business with Belize is going to be much easier, much faster because it includes digitization and things like that.”