7 News Belize

Grants For Trade Opportunities
posted (April 25, 2018)
We know about Beltraide's small and medium enterprise development programs and the entrepreneurial trainings but they partnered with Caribbean Export Development Agency to offer assistance to more large scale private sector companies. Caribbean Export offers what is called a Direct Assistance Grant Scheme (DAGS) which is a reimbursing grant. The agency has been offering this grant to companies all over the Caribbean for 10 years. There has been a few tweaks to the program over the years so today reps. from Beltraide and Caribbean Export held sort of a tutorial session for companies on how to apply for this grant. Here is more from today's session.

Christopher Mcnair, Manager, Caribbean Export
"So we are doing two things today, the first thing is we are promoting what we call a direct assistance grant scheme (DAGS) and then the second thing we are doing which is the most important thing is that we are actually trying to teach companies how to apply to the program and how to navigate the difficult elements of the program."

"It is the only program that we actually have funds to directly invest in company so it a program geared towards addressing the need of access to finance for companies. It is a program targeted to companies who are exporting or looking to build their capacity to export so it is not for everybody, it is not for start up's and those kinds of things."

Shahera Mckoy, Manager Export Belize, Beltraide
"Today we have producers of goods and services, I know we have some architects, we also have BEL-CAR, we have Femagra, we have some SME's, we have people in spawn wellness industry so it is a wide cross section."

"The call officially opened on April 23rd which means companies can start downloading the applications from the Caribbean Export site and filing it in. We are here to provide guidance in terms of what costs can be covered, what costs are not covered. We really want to support as much companies as possible in filling out the applications, we want to see more applications from Belize, more successful applications from Belize so once companies start applying Beltraide is here to provide advice on that process,"

Those companies who are interested can get the application form on Caribbean Export's website.

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