And that growing trade imbalance is consistent with a trend, going back to 2010, and the gap has only widened since 2020.
Statistician Tiffany Vasquez gave the overview going back to 2010:
Tiffany Vasquez, Statistician II
"Its quite evident that spending on imports have been rising steadily only to have increase rapidly in the last 2 years due to the effects of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, reaching to a point in 2022 where imports are almost 3 times that of exports. This picture however simply exposes one fact, that while imports have been going up overall, Belize's domestic exports have been gradually declining for many years."
"Citrus exports also took an unfortunate turn for after a long drawn-out battle with disease and of late labour challenges and the significant input cost of fuel and fertilizers, orange and grapefruit concentrate export earnings went from 143 million dollars in 2012 to 27 million dollars in 2022."
"However, the steepest decline of all major exports came from marine products. As the collapse of shrimp which began in 2015 was swift and harsh. Prior to the fall of shrimp in 2014, marine exports were valued at 113 million dollars. In 2022 it was less than half that at 53 million dollars."
