Katherine Meighan, President, Belize Chamber of Commerce
"We want to be able to know that there is a path and predictability for something that as significant as changing the minimum wage. A change in the minimum wage has a very very impactful, it can be positive it can be negative, effect within our business economy and within our business community. From the minimum wage perspective this goes back when the discussions about $5 an hour had come up there was a group that was put together of the tripartite entity meaning the unions or the employees, the employees and the government they took a tremendous amount of time to identify what was the most predictable and healthiest way to move that forward and unfortunately that formula and all the work that went into that did not get applied. And the purpose of that and I will add that from the employees end there was commitment and agreement and there was a clear understanding of why there was a need for the formula and why there was a need for more predictability I also think it's important for us to think about is the minimum wage really having the impact that we need it to have. When there is an increase in the minimum wage coupled with inflation."