The annual Belize Investment Summit is a flagship of the Briceno administration - which is fond of boasting how business oriented it is.
The event was first held back in 2021 and since then it has grown from 200 participants to over 500. And the Ministry of Investment is now gearing up for the 2025 summit, which will once again be held in San Pedro.
The planning for the event is already well underway and today organizers held a session with the media to give us the rules of the road.
It is slated for September 3rd to the 5th and the guest speakers will be Dr Ernesto Stein from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Adam Stewart, the executive chairman of Sandals Resorts International.
The Director of the Investment Policy & Compliance Unit at the Ministry told us why they selected those speakers and what the successes of the past summits have looked like.
Lincoln Blake, Dir., Investment Policy & Compliance Unit, Min. of Investment:
"Those are persons of experience, regional and international experience in business and investment. So if you take a look at all the past investment summits, all have been persons that have significant experience within the specific thematic areas that we have for the summit and in this case it's no different where we want to focus on the region, take advantage of the opportunities in the region, not only Mexico and Guatemala but the entire Central America and CARICOM region and that's why these two key note speakers have been asked to come in."
"One of the successes of the investment summit is the networking. The summit has actually created an environment where the investors and some of the senior government officials and technocrats would be able to meet with investors to make investments happen. And it has worked well. From the first investment summit in 2021 to date we have seen a growth in the amount of investors coming in with interest and also we have seen the data from the Central Bank where the foreign direct investment specifically has been growing from since 2021 to date."
"The small businesses mainly contact us when they especially need to probably engage, especially financiers or other investors that will be able to some sort of equity investment in their specific projects, especially if they want to grow and expand and that type of opportunity, the investment summit has also given to some of the local investors but in most cases a lot of them have come to the investment summit to garner new ideas because when they're going there, they have presentations and be able to listen to new strategies and also new sectors that offer new opportunities for them to grow."
The summit will be held at Sunset Caribe.
