Turning back now to our interview with Minister of Agriculture, Food Security, and Enterprise, Jose Mai, recently he's been broaching the idea of a paradigm shift in trade: basically to stop dreaming of a fully functioning CARICOM Single Market and Economy and build on trading relationships with our neighboring states of Mexico, Guatemala and Salvador.
Of course, it's not as easy as that - since there is so much shared between Belize and CARICOM. We challenged Mai on that today:
Jules Vasquez
"So many agreements with CARICOM, they are so important in their support for us in our referendum with the Guatemalans, these are our allies, how can you just propose to turn your back?"
Hon. Jose Mai - Minister of Agriculture, Food Security and Enterprise
"Let me just correct that statement, you said like we should break away or diversify market?"
Jules Vasquez
"Diversify market and focus on Central America."
Hon. Jose Mai
"I think we will diversify our markets. We cannot be depending on a very difficult market, I will tell you something, they are our allies, they supported us, were in the CARICOM region, when we wanted independence they supported us but trade wise, it's not working for us, it's not working for us. You know we have a container of poultry stuck in Grenada for the past 6 months right now? One container."
Jules Vasquez
"And this isn't the first time that has happened, one had gotten stuck in Trinidad."
Hon. Jose Mai
"And I was sitting in a meeting listening to them saying to me that the poultry phyto-sanitary certificate has to indicate that these poultry and poultry parts are free of foot and mouth disease that affects cattle? I don't know how I took so much time sitting in that meeting listening to this nonsense."
Jules Vasquez
"Are the CARICOM nations the type that put up these artificial barriers to trade?"
Hon. Jose Mai
"Everybody does it."
Jules Vasquez
"But they should not do it against their own CARICOM brethren."
Hon. Jose Mai
"Let me tell you something, Mexico is 123 million people, you want a bigger market than that? Guatemala is 18 million people. We are right here man, 8 hours away from El Salvador, 15 minutes to Guatemala through Bullet Tree and they want our citrus, they want our carrots, they want our onions, they only problem is tariffs. I think that we should look at focusing on Central America for markets definitely while keeping our CARICOM friends right close to us, they want a container of Marie Sharp, send it to them, they want a container of coconut oil, send it to them, they want beef send it to them, they want poultry send it to them but right next door here, come on."
Jules Vasquez
"So to expend more energy to trying to penetrate the CARICOM markets you believe is waste of time."
Hon. Jose Mai
"I believe it will be a lot of hard work."
Mai says Belize currently has 180 containers of RK beans to ship to Jamaica but adds that their, quote, "trade and business ethic has a lot to be improved."
