Raphael John-Lall

T&T Coali­tion of Ser­vices In­dus­tries (TTC­SI) Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer, Vashti Guyadeen is con­fi­dent that small and medi­um-sized (SMEs) ser­vices com­pa­nies in both T&T and Be­lize, will ben­e­fit from a new and strate­gic part­ner­ship be­tween the TTC­SI and the Be­lize Coali­tion of Ser­vice Providers (BC­SP).

“Un­der the Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MOU) we at TTC­SI have a unique op­por­tu­ni­ty to share our ex­per­tise and ex­pe­ri­ence in build­ing an eco­nom­ic sec­tor with our re­gion­al coun­ter­part in Be­lize,” Guyadeen told the Busi­ness Guardian in a state­ment.

Last Thurs­day, Pres­i­dent of the Be­lize Coali­tion of Ser­vices Providers, Dr Dionne Cham­ber­lain-Mi­ran­da signed an MOU for a strate­gic part­ner­ship agree­ment at the TTC­SI’s head of­fice in Wood­brook. The agree­ment paves the way for the en­ti­ties to work to­geth­er, us­ing their re­spec­tive spe­cialised ex­per­tise to sup­port each oth­er with busi­ness de­vel­op­ment and mar­ket­ing ac­tiv­i­ties.

Ac­cord­ing to the MOU, TTC­SI and BC­SP will “ex­plore the ef­fec­tive use and in­te­gra­tion of each oth­er’s tech­nolo­gies in­to the re­spec­tive so­lu­tions be­ing de­vel­oped and mar­ket­ed by the two par­ties.”

Guyadeen ex­plained that over the past few years, the TTC­SI has been help­ing lo­cal ser­vices SMEs en­hance their in­ter­na­tion­al com­pet­i­tive­ness and break in­to for­eign mar­kets with its Ser­vices Go Glob­al and Gate­way to Trade ini­tia­tives.

She said with this new part­ner­ship, the TTC­SI will take on a men­tor­ing role, as­sist­ing a sis­ter coali­tion in the Caribbean—the BC­SP—with its own growth and de­vel­op­ment so that it can evolve in­to a strong sup­port for Be­lizean en­tre­pre­neurs, firms and busi­ness or­gan­i­sa­tions.

“Mean­while, BC­SP will work with TTSCI to sup­port col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween T&T and Be­lizean firms in a busi­ness-to-busi­ness (B2B) en­vi­ron­ment. In its quest to de­vel­op the Be­lizean ser­vice sec­tor, BC­SP will draw on TTC­SI’s rich ex­pe­ri­ence in this re­gard, es­pe­cial­ly in de­vel­op­ing “an ex­porter’s mind­set” among such firms and en­tre­pre­neurs. This will see BC­SP im­ple­ment­ing sev­er­al projects sim­i­lar to those cre­at­ed and un­der­tak­en by TTC­SI to make ser­vices firms ex­port ready.”

She al­so said the ul­ti­mate mis­sion is to cre­ate a re­silient, in­no­v­a­tive, and sus­tain­able ser­vices sec­tor with­in the Caribbean re­gion it­self, with its firms and en­tre­pre­neurs ca­pa­ble of com­pet­ing suc­cess­ful­ly on the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket and pro­vid­ing pros­per­i­ty to the wider re­gion­al econ­o­my.

T&T’S re­gion­al ex­am­ple

The state­ment quot­ed Cham­ber­lain-Mi­ran­da as say­ing that the BC­SP is ex­cit­ed to be em­bark­ing on the strate­gic part­ner­ship with the TTC­SI, which is set­ting an ex­am­ple in the re­gion how to build a cadre of ser­vices ex­porters, step-by-step.

“The TTC­SI has de­vel­oped crit­i­cal com­pe­ten­cies in cap­tur­ing im­por­tant ser­vices trade da­ta and lever­ag­ing that to in­form and en­hance poli­cies sup­port­ing the sec­tor’s growth, which we def­i­nite­ly are hop­ing to ac­quire our­selves, for the ben­e­fit of Be­lizean ser­vices en­tre­pre­neurs,” Cham­ber­lain-Mi­ran­da said.

She added: “We al­so look for­ward to see­ing busi­ness part­ner­ships and joint ven­tures even­tu­al­ly tak­ing place be­tween firms in both our coun­tries, and to pro­mot­ing the Be­lizean Ser­vices Sec­tor in the amaz­ing ‘Do­ing Busi­ness with the World’ Se­ries.”

Op­por­tu­ni­ties for T&T busi­ness

Cham­ber­lain-Mi­ran­da al­so spoke about op­por­tu­ni­ties in Be­lize’s busi­ness sec­tor at the TTC­SI’s head of­fice be­fore the sign­ing of the MOU.

Ac­cord­ing to the Unit­ed States De­part­ment of State’s web­site of its pro­file of Be­lize, it has the small­est econ­o­my in Cen­tral Amer­i­ca, with a Gross Do­mes­tic Prod­uct (GDP) of US$1.4 bil­lion, based large­ly on tourism.

The Unit­ed States De­part­ment of State al­so said that Be­lize’s prox­im­i­ty to the eco­nom­i­cal­ly de­vel­oped na­tions of North Amer­i­ca has trans­lat­ed to de­pen­dence on tourism as the pri­ma­ry eco­nom­ic sec­tor. Agri­cul­ture as the sec­ond most im­por­tant eco­nom­ic sec­tor is based on a small group of ex­ports, in­clud­ing sug­ar, ba­nana, and cit­rus juice.

Cham­ber­lain-Mi­ran­da gave ex­am­ples of op­por­tu­ni­ties for T&T’s busi­ness sec­tor in Be­lize’s agri­cul­ture sec­tor.

“Con­sult­ing and ex­per­tise could come from T&T in the ar­eas of food han­dling and preser­v­a­tives, We have been do­ing val­ue added train­ing for co­conut farm­ers. The Eu­ro­pean Union and the World Bank have been in­ter­est­ed in help­ing us get in­to di­vers­fied ar­eas and this is one area of the econ­o­my we are look­ing at. Be­lize al­so needs fer­til­iz­ers, her­bi­cides and in­sec­ti­cides are al­so im­por­tant. We al­so have one of the high­est qual­i­ties of choco­lates.”

While Be­lize is a small coun­try which has a small eon­o­my, she said Be­lize is strate­gi­cal­ly lo­cat­ed in Cen­tral Amer­i­ca and this could ben­e­fit T&T.

“Be­lize is a great con­duit through oth­er coun­tries, which T&T can have ac­cess to.”

She al­so spoke of fis­cal in­cen­tives for po­ten­tial T&T in­vestors and said T&T busi­ness who want to set up in Be­lize can eas­i­ly do it on­line from T&T.

“The Fis­cal In­cen­tive Act pro­vides sev­er­al dif­fer­ent things. There’s a reg­u­lar one off. So you come in­to the coun­try for one project and they will pro­vide you with tax ex­emp­tions. There are ex­emp­tions for SME’s. If you are try­ing to for­malise your busi­ness for the first time, they as­sist you in the pro­cess­ing. Every­thing is elec­tron­ic so you can set up your busi­ness in Be­lize from T&T. Every­thing is on­line.”

IMF on Be­lize

In its May 2023 Ar­ti­cle IV Con­sul­ta­tion with the au­thor­i­ties in Be­lize, the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) said eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty re­bound­ed strong­ly from the pan­dem­ic. “Af­ter con­tract­ing by 13.4 per cent in 2020, re­al GDP ex­pand­ed by 15.2 per cent in 2021 and 12.1 per cent in 2022, led by re­tail and whole­sale trade, tourism, and busi­ness process out­sourc­ing.

“Re­al GDP growth is pro­ject­ed to slow to 2.4 per cent in 2023 and 2 per cent over the medi­um term as tourism re­turns to pre-pan­dem­ic lev­els,” said the IMF con­clud­ing state­ment fol­low­ing the Con­sul­ta­tion.

The IMF said in­fla­tion in Be­lize in­creased from near ze­ro in 2020 to 3.2 per cent in 2021 and 6.3 per cent in 2022, led by high­er glob­al en­er­gy and food prices, de­spite mea­sures to fix do­mes­tic diesel and reg­u­lar gaso­line prices at the pump since April 2022.

“In­fla­tion is pro­ject­ed to fall to 4.1 per cent in 2023 and 1.2 per cent over the medi­um term, in line with the pro­ject­ed fall in com­mod­i­ty prices and glob­al in­fla­tion. Risks to the out­look re­main tilt­ed to the down­side, in­clud­ing a sharp glob­al slow­down, fur­ther in­creas­es in com­mod­i­ty prices, and cli­mate-re­lat­ed dis­as­ters,” said the IMF.