Yesterday we showed you a story on the Caribbean Single Market and Economy. It's based on a free trade model, where goods and services should be able to move freely through the 20 member states in the CARICOM region.
But while that is how it exists in theory, in practical terms Belize has found that breaking agricultural products into CARICOM markets has been a challenge.
CEO in the Ministry of Agriculture Servulo Baeza spoke about what can only be called barriers for trade for Belizean poultry in Granada:
Servulo Baeza, CEO , Minister of Agriculture
"In terms of agriculture, one our major exports is agriculture. Agricultural products. We've been having a lot of difficulties in terms of entering the CARICOM market. We have challenges wth red kidney beans, we have challenges with our sugar, we have challenges with our poultry. As of late, for instance Quality Poultry was trying to enter the Grenada market for Poultry and for a lack of terms we weren't able to... We have written to Jamaica for instance, we have been asking, asking and they don't even respond to us."
"In terms of the regional level we talked about including interregional trade and we can't just only talk about it. We also have to act and so when we want to export into these regional CARICOM brothers and sisters they should be open to our exports. So we are highlighting some of the difficulties we are having so that we can be able to increase our trade with our CARICOM brothers and sisters. And so we are hoping that we can go back and try to see how we can find some solution."
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