The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) is hosting a 5 day workshop entitled "Planning skills for implementing Trade Facilitation Reforms." Representatives from the Ministry of Investment and the Customs department participated. Now, you engage in trade every time you travel to..let's say Chetumal or when anyone crosses one border to next whether it be for shopping, vacation, school or business. But that is just one aspect on the trade pyramid. On the larger scale, there are so many regulations and tariffs among other factors that impact free trade and investment. So the workshop is centered on the trade facilitation agreement and how the committee can better enforce it for economic development. Here is more from the event...
Terence Leonard, UNCTAD, Program Management Officer for ASYCUDA
"It is about the entry into force for the trade facilitation agreement of the World Trade Organization and so as part of the 2019 empowerment program Belize is currently receiving support through this workshop from UNCTAD, the United Nations on implementing the Trade Facilitation agreement. There is a national facilitation committee which has been established in Belize as in many other countries world wide and so the mandate of this committee is to ensure that the agreement which Belize is signatory to is implemented in the most effective and efficient manner way so basically in a nutshell we are here to assist the committee and the related agencies, the trade border regulatory agencies including customs on the steps it should take to ensure that this agreement is implemented properly."
"This agreement has far reaching consequences, the TFA of the WTO basically tried to remove the bottlenecks that exist in international trade that is very important for trade and commerce and investors as well and of course government do not trade, the private sector trades and so governments responsibility is to have an enabling environment to facilitate that trade of course by removing heavy regulations and fees increasing the time it takes to transit the border if it is passengers or goods, services, that means a lot. In the long term it plays out to be an enabler of a proper environment to ensure your borders are not too restrictive but have investors see that your environment is conducive to investment and trade."
"As an economist I can tell you that I can see a bright future for Belize, development is a process I think what the country is doing in terms of removing those bottlenecks is an important phase to get there and that is countries like New Zealand, Singapore, the more developed countries that is what they did."
The participants also discussed the digitization of Customs procedures also known as (ASYCUDA) Automated System for Customs Data among other topics. The workshop ends on Friday.
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