The Ministry of Economic Investment, Trade and Commerce teamed up with BELTRAIDE to launch the Belize Investment Portfolio Campaign today at the Radisson.
With major international backing, this campaign is expected to act as a fast-track investment opportunity with pre-packaged investment concepts and projects. Basically, the idea is to present tailor made investment opportunities.
The Minister of State in the Ministry of Economic Development, Tracy Panton, and the General Manager of Enterprise and Innovation at BELTRAIDE to us more about the campaign...
Hon. Tracy Taegar-Panton
"As you know the environment is getting far more competitive in terms of attracting investment dollars to the region and obviously to Belize and so we felt that it was important to develop a national portfolio of projects that are coming either out of the private sector or the public sector that we can use to pitch to new investors and to try and stimulate more foreign investments into the country and also to support foreign domestic investments."
Lejia Melanie Gideon - General Manager, Enterprise & Innovation, BELTRAIDE
"This campaign launch represents how we better work with private sector and other government entities to be able to make sure we bring in the right kind of investment in the priority areas and there are 6 priority areas. This is a symbol of collaboration both intergovernmental and public and private. So this is a hallmark for us. This is a milestone and a key initiative where it's been formalize how best as a country we can bring in the right kind of investments into the country."
Jules Vasquez, 7News
"Is there some urgency to this? Because we know FDI in Belize with the entire investment climate and the corresponding banking situation, FDI is less than optimal."
Lejia Melanie Gideon
"Well I am not sure about that, so I'm not going to agree with that. Considering last year we rank 4th regionally for the FDI inflow and that's not a small thing considering we are talking about the Americas. So I won't agree about that. What this does say though is that BELTRAIDE has always been very conscious of bringing in the right investment when it comes to - is it going to have the right amount of foreign exchange generation? Is it going to have the right kind of employment? And when I talk about the right kind of employment it's anywhere from entry level to skill level to semiskilled. Is it going to be scattered around the country appropriately? This campaign is about that. Because this is a first phase. Second phase is how we take all this information and for lack of a better word, a geographic information system when it comes to investment. How do we map out the country when it comes to investment? Corozal - what are the investment projects there? Do we have the right mix? Do we need to do something different? Do we need to fine tune? Because again I talk about foreign exchange, I've talk about employment. Now it's how do I diversify and strengthen the country."
Taegar-Panton is the Chair of the Cabinet Sub-committee on Investments.
The project is launched in collaboration with ConnectAmericas, the IDB and the Caribbean Association of Investment Promotion Agencies.
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