And one of the many things Belize imported more of in January and February is beverages and tobacco - those imports were up 1.1 million dollars in the first two months of the year.
Interesting, because production of beer and soft drinks were also up in the last quarter of 2022.
That increase was part of a strong fourth quarter of 2022 when the GDP grew by 10%. Here's the overview:
Christopher Hulse, Statistician - SIB
"Overall, for 4th quarter 2022 we have a 10.5% increase in GDP. Primary sector was the only sector that showed a decrease at 6.2%. Secondary, driven by electricity went up by 25.5% and then the tertiary sector went up by 10.7%
And here are the figures for the domestic productions of soft drinks and beer:
Christopher Hulse, Statistician - SIB
"Beverages overall grew by 16.2%. We see soft drinks at 26.4% increase. Beer 11.8% increase and rum at 38.8% increase. So soft drink production increase from 2,002.9 thousand of gallons to 2,532.2 thousand of gallons. Moving on to beer, in 2021 quarter 4, we had 843.1 thousand of gallons, in quarter 4 of 2022 we had 942.6 thousand of gallons, increased by 11.8%."
In the overall GDP analysis, only the primary sector was down, while the secondary sector showed the strongest growth in areas like electricity production, and wholesale and retail trade.
