Bureau of Standards Implementing New Standards Policy

Today, the Belize Bureau of Standards hosted an engaging familiarization workshop for key industry players involved in measuring, weighing, and quantifying goods. This initiative is part of the Bureau’s mission to advance Belize’s national quality infrastructure, focusing on standardization, metrology, and conformity assessment. The workshop aimed to refresh participants’ knowledge as the Bureau transitions from policy development to active implementation. Director Samantha Banner emphasized the crucial role of diverse sector participation in this process. Adding an international perspective, Riccardo Benvenuti from the British Standards Institution lent his expertise to support the initiative.

 

Samantha Banner, Director, Belize Bureau of Standards

“It’s an opportunity to bring everybody together to work to develop this quality infrastructure system that will help improve the quality of life for our Belizeans, one where we look beyond price because that’s always the major point, looking beyond price and looking at quality and start demanding quality in everything that is done within our country.  As it relates to verification of wing and measuring instruments, we do have a system schedule where we do verification exercises. We do ensure to the best of our ability that these weighing and measuring instruments are verified. And as a consumer, you can identify that we verified a weighing or measuring instrument by a sticker that we affix to that instrument. We also encourage you to look up for that sticker. If it’s not there, you can always give us a call and you can let us know that your local grocery down the street from you doesn’t have a sticker on their scale. And you want us to come and we come so we and we have a hotline number. It’s zero, eight hundred, two, eight, three, five, five, eight, seven or you can email us at the help desk at.”

 

Riccardo Benvenuti, Rep., British Standards Institution

“The idea is to support government standards body abroad, but also private sector to use international standards to open their opportunity to international and sustainable trade. We’re really happy to see that in these years the policy has been approved by the government. But we all know that one thing is approving a policy, and the other thing is actually implementing it. So, there are a lot of policies sitting on shelves that are actually not implemented. So, under standard partnership, we are supporting and empowering BBS, the government of Belize, or also all the other stakeholders in implementing this policy, which is really key for the economy of Belize.”