And finally tonight, according to the Statistical Institute of Belize's records, domestic exports for the month of April 2022 declined by 13.6%, or 6.2 million dollars when compared to April of last year. And it was the decreased exports of sugar and bananas that contributed the most to this.
And that's why, Beltraide held a special forum aimed at exploring new approaches to enhance Belize's export competitiveness. The goal of today's forum was to develop strategies, action plans, and an implementation roadmap to address constraints in selected industries.
Today, the manager of Export Belize told us more about the forum and why it is important that Belize steps up its export game.
Shahera McKoy - Manager, Export Belize Beltraide
"We're looking at development of a road map for Belize in terms of how our companies become competitive in regional and international markets. So today a draft road map will be presented to participants here both private and public sector and they will provide feedback in terms of some key areas like new product development, how do you use technology to assist with competitiveness things like financing. It's basically to charge a way forward for export sector to grow, to develop and to take advantage of market opportunities. A lot of times we think Belize has these wonderful products but when it's time to get into a market, there is standards, there is requirements that we need to make, so the idea is to discuss how we can have an environment in Belize, how the government of Belize can continue to facilitate programs and mechanisms so that our exporters are able to meet those market access requirements so that they can access technology to differentiate what Belize has to offer from what other countries have to offer. It is very important, if we look at the size of our population, a lot of our producers you sell to the local market quickly, you need to go somewhere else, we have a small market and there's opportunities for a lot of what we have here. It's also very important as foreign exchange earners, a lot of times we need to have access to US dollars to also buy inputs on other things that we use here but if we're not making that money, we're not exporting and bringing those foreign exchange, we'll have difficulty in getting the other goods and services we need."
The forum was funded with help from the Commonwealth Secretariat.
