M.S.M.E.’s to Benefit from B.C.C.I/I.D.B Technical Cooperation Agreement

Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises, also known as M.S.M.Es, stand to benefit from a technical cooperation agreement that the Belize Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Inter-American Development Bank have signed. The project, worth one point two million dollars, aims to offer technical support and training in digitalization and the ease that digitalized processing offers to these small businesses. The B.C.C.I’s Project Coordinator, Genesia Tucker explains.

Genesia Tucker

Genesia Tucker, Project Coordinator, B.C.C.I.

“We’re looking at low-income, poor and vulnerable people. We’re also looking at women-led businesses, as well as those who are just starting out – so start-ups, so those would be the main beneficiaries of the project and what we want to do is, through innovation, through the use of technology and digital transformation, we want to use these tools to help these small businesses to take advantage of all these opportunities that are within the business environment that they’re not privy to – that they don’t have the opportunity to get a hold of because they don’t have the resources; they don’t have the capacity or even some may not know that these technologies are out there to assist them. For instance, the project looks at the business environment, post-COVID, and a lot has changed due to COVID. Whether it’s how we market, whether it’s how we accept payment, whether it’s how we take our orders, how we can be more efficient, how we can use maybe data to make better decisions. We’ll be having programs that target the digital services professionals to train these persons who offer services that M.S.M.Es can use. There will be component or a program in the project where we will look at how we can get those businesses legal or having them use the opportunity of being registered, having a bank account, having all of these things so we could then assist them in getting a loan or we could then assist them in getting machinery.”