Greater Investments Needed in Belize’s Creative Sector

Prime Minister John Briceño

A lot of attention is being placed on the orange economy at this year’s investment summit. The orange economy is also known as the creative sector and it includes music production, movie production, culture and heritage, among other opportunities. Now, there was not much to show at the summit from Belize’s orange economy. It is, in fact, one of the most underdeveloped sectors in Belize. So, we asked Prime Minister John Briceño about that and what his government is doing to invest more in arts and culture. Here is what he told us.

Prime Minister John Briceño

“There are so much great opportunities and potential in the orange economy. I think the presentation that President Ivan Duque Marquez made was an eye opener for everyone to see the great opportunities that exist in the orange economy. What we have been unable to do is to harness that creativity especially of our young people in the arts, the music, and the raw talent that exist. We need to find a way how we can harness that and make it become into a big industry that can create opportunities and jobs and monies for these young people especially these DJ’s that are trying to hustle to make ends meet. What he is saying is that is requires the government to basically to set place the institutions, the opportunities, legislation that we can encourage them to participate and at the same time to attract foreigners to invest. For instance when it comes to movie making, we have everything you could imagine, from the jungle, to the food, to the culture, the water, everything you could imagine the movie industry would want. But they don’t know about it and we make it difficult for them to come. I was talking to Minister Coye last night. We have a group filming, they are filming but they have had endless challenges, labor is giving them trouble, because they are going to be here for more than thirty days, immigration is giving them trouble because they are going to be filming for more than thirty days.”