A delegation from the World Trade organization is in Belize this week to facilitate a five day advanced training in trade negotiations simulation skills. This training was requested by G.O.B. from the World Trade Organization and is intended to develop the skills of Belize’s trade negotiation team in order to ensure our country’s effective participation in trade negotiations at the multilateral and bilateral level. Here is more from the event.
Andy Sutherland - Director General foreign Trade, Ministry of Investment, Trade and commerce
"This initiative is to be able to fine tune the team to be able to address and expand the trade mandate for Belize. You know that we launched the national trade policy in February 2019 and that policy outlines that Belize seeks additional market access for its private sector. We are currently engaged with Mexico to determine a bilateral agreement with them. We may be engaged with Guatemala and El Salvador in the future as well. With CARICOM which we’re a part of we have a bilateral agreement with the Dominican Republic and with Costa Rica and we have also signalled interests over the last few weeks with Taiwan so the negotiating agenda for Belize is quite packed and this training is like a tuning fork so to speak for the negotiating team because when we approach these negotiations we want to be a cohesive unit that is in sync, that is strategized and organized and can deliver the best outcome for Belize."
Yeboah Dickson, Ph.D - World Trade Organization
"We need to explain and teach the participants the importance of the secrets of negotiations, and the secret of negotiations is to harmonize the interests of your negotiating partner and to bring out prominently the common advantage to Belize, and to Mexico of any proposal that Belize puts on the table and to link these advantages so that they appear equally balanced to both Belize and Mexico and therefore in the preparation of Belize’s negotiating team they need to take into account the interest of Mexico in Belize. We can use our embassy/consulate in Mexico to fit the negotiating team in Belize what their interests are in our beautiful country we can also use the universities in Belize to research our negotiating partners interests in our country. We need to harmonize the interests of farmers in the country with other entities, with private sector entities with academia, so that when the Belize negotiating team is on the table they are well prepared have all the parameters before them to strike a deal and to reach a win-win outcome for the negotiating team."
Reporter
"How do these new negotiating teams that you've trained tend to fare their first time negotiating with countries that are very well prepared and in that way more aggressive?"
Yeboah Dickson
"Excellent! because the profile of countries we are using here are based on your main trading partners and participants are going to use their data to negotiate. So once they are able to go through this one week intensive course, right after this course they are prepared to negotiate anywhere and this is what has helped the negotiating team I helped to train in Ecuador, because the next time I went to Quito the minister was telling me, Dickson, you know the head of delegation of this group is now our head of negotiation for services with Canada. Our Chief negotiator on this front with China, with the United States and that really gladdens me because the government is using them straight away after the course and Andy can tell you this course will prepare them to negotiate with any future negotiating partner that Belize will have in mind."
It is expected that successfully negotiated trade deals will, moving forward, facilitate optimal economic development for Belize.
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