The Statistical Institute of Belize released its latest economic figures today. They show a slight increase in GDP for the fourth quarter of last year, a
sharp decrease in imports and exports for February 2016, and a slight increase in consumer prices also in February.
Also of note is that both the shrimp and drought crises of 2015 along with plummeting world oil prices were among the main contributing factors for the
fluctuating figures in SIB's latest report.
First we take a more in-depth look at the Gross Domestic Product for the last quarter of 2015- that is from October to December. During this period GDP
increased slightly by 0.6% percent.
Jefte Ochaeta - Statistician I, SIB
"Total production of good and services in the country for the 4th quarter of 2015 showed an increase of 0.6 percent compared to the same period in
2014. The average estimate for the annual growth for 2015 is at 1 percent. Now when we focus our attention to the 4th quarter of 2015 why there was a
small increase in the GDP of 0.6 percent and we look specifically at each of the industries that compose the national economy. We observed that the
fishing industry is bringing down basically the growth of the GDP and that's why there is a negative implication to the contribution to the GDP growth
by fishing and also by agriculture. The only other industries that provided a positive impact were government services, electricity, wholesale and
retail and transport and communication."
A 5% increase in Construction activity also had a significant impact on GDP growth.
In the primary sector which includes "Farming and Agriculture", production saw a sharp decline of 27.4% percent. This was due largely to the fact that in
2015 shrimp farms were wiped out by a bacterial infection. Banana shipments also decreased by 25% percent, or more than 7 thousand metric tons. This was
largely due to drought conditions.
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