National M.S.M.E. Road Show Pulls Into Belize City
The National M.S.M.E. Road Show is being held at the ITVET compound in Belize City and will run until Friday. The initiative which is being carried out by Beltraide with the support of the Ministry of Finance is making its way down from Corozal. News Five’s Isani Cayetano reports.
Isani Cayetano, Reporting
A national initiative to support Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises, or M.S.M.E.’s, across the country, was launched by the Office of the Prime Minister and Beltraide at the end of July. The idea is to foster an enabling environment for the development of M.S.M.E.’s, as well as to improve market access and establishment of business linkages. Several weeks later, the traveling initiative has made its way to Belize City.
Leroy Almendarez
Dr. Leroy Almendarez, Executive Director, Beltraide
“Here is an opportunity, an opportunity that will help you to get, you know, like business modeling, how to understand how to do business, all of those trainings that you will need in order to sustain yourself, you know, that is being available and we’re calling it a boot camp. Boot camp means you stay in there and you get all that information and you know how to operate. You will have things like pop-up shops where, like on Friday, you can bring out your business, people can learn more about it, there will be town hall meetings because we do want feedback, it should be, you know, dialogue oriented.”
Deputy Mayor Allan Pollard Jr. attended on behalf of the Belize City Council. He likens what he saw to the realization of certain aspects of the People’s United Party’s Plan Belize manifesto.
Allan Pollard Jr.
Allan Pollard Jr., Deputy Mayor, Belize City
“I’m just happy to see that, you know, these were some of the things that were in the Plan Belize document and some of the things that we campaigned on and seeing these come to fruition now is quite a remarkable thing. And I am happy to see that we have full attendance today, you know, people are very engaged and it’s not just information but people are involved. It’s very interactive and I think that a lot could come out of it and just to expand on what we have been seeing in the Belize City accelerator program and having programs like these, I feel very comfortable in the future of the Belizean economy.”
A formalization clinic will subsequently provide a space for key government agencies and financial institutions to offer services and relevant information to MSMEs, including live registrations.
Dr. Leroy Almendarez
“At the end of all of this, what we want is a registry of all operating MSMEs. It’s hard for us to really understand how many of them are really operated. The other part of it is that there are a lot of informals that exist and there is a fear that you only want me to formalize because you only want me to pay taxes. No, there are so many benefits to formalization. So that will help us quite a bit to have some understanding, in a database, of the number and then we can reconcile that information with the SIBs and other data gathering institutions.”
Isani Cayetano for News Five.
