But we might have a hard time getting to where we were before the pandemic hit with borders reopening in February. Those first few months will likely see Belizeans going en masse across the border to shop at Chedraui and Sam's, and to entertain themselves with Cinepolis and Rock Shots nightclub. It's expected, and the BCCI is bracing themselves. But the president says they're making recommendations to make Belizean businesses more competitive.
Marissa Longsworth, President, BCCI
"A big part of the BCCI's position has to do with how do we ensure as we have been lobbying for going on 2 years now - how do we ensure that when we re-open borders in general whether it's the airports or the sea ports or the land ports - how do we ensure that we've done it in a way that relies on data and proper information so that we don't endanger our people and that we don't overwhelm our health system capacity, so that's something that we have always lobbied for is that we have a system of some sort. I know that we are currently going by 5% positivity rate, then it is safe for certain activities. We have gone a little bit further than that in our lobbying for the last two years where we have been looking more at search capacity, so even though you might have a lower positivity rate, search capacity kind of has more of a foresight into what the current positivity rate could look like say the next weeks or the next week and how can your health system manage the possibility of the rates going up versus the possibility of the rates going down, because we have a 5% positivity rate today, but depending on how many hospital beds are getting filled and how stressed our health system is, we might have to have a plan for reducing movements rather than having to close down, we might be able to have a plan where there is a reduction based on the search capacity rather than having to move straight to shutting down every time there is a surge of some sort, so that's the first aspect for us have to do with health and kind of giving us the predictability to say that we have a system in place that guides us in terms of how the health landscape is looking and the capacity to manage what could be the situation within a week or 2 weeks or so."
And she adds that they'll try to reduce the taxes that Belizeans have to pay because of increased freight costs.
Marissa Longsworth, President, BCCI
"For us it's a major concern in terms of just the mere ability for Belizeans businesses to be competitive with the prices over the border. But we do realize as well that we can't indefinitely keep the borders closed, so there has to be some sort of compromise, some sort of medium where there would still be able to have that in place, but at the same time have incentives of some sort for Belizean businesses to become more competitive. One of those aspects that we have been lobbying for even during this time while the borders have been closed, a lot of Belizeans have mentioned and even myself as a consumer we have seen higher prices on the shelves and one of the aspects of that I know that there are some questions about the profit margins that vendors and merchants take, but one of the major aspects that we have been speaking to the government about is that there is a freight duty at the port that is a percentage of the cost of freight. So over the covid period the cost of freight went up by 300% because the cost of containers went up by 300%. Automatically once those containers land and the cost of the container is listed, then the percentage of duty applies to the cost of the container. So if the price of a container went up by 300% so did the duty as direct result in the way that the duty is applied. One of the things we have ask for is for the government to tap that duty so that we are able to at least control the freight cost which would then control the cost to the consumer, because much of the cost that is being experience really is the cost of bringing the product to the consumer in the market."
