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BELTRAIDE & UB Collaborate For Enterprise Development
Wed, April 16, 2014
The University of Belize and BELTRAIDE signed a memorandum of Understanding today, which will see future entrepreneurs passing through the institution get an opportunity to bring their business ideas to life.

The MOU will allow BELTRAIDE's Small Business Development Center activate at a higher capacity so that persons interested can receive training on different enterprise management techniques.

7News attended that signing and spoke with representatives of both bodies:

Harrison Pilgrim, Chair, Board of Trustees, UB
"We need to look further than the university because the University of Belize was formed from a partnership you could call it of 5 different institutions and the objective of government at that time and continues to be the goal of the administration is to ensure that this partnership yields benefits for the people of Belize and so it is not a partnership with BELTRAIDE for the benefit of the university but we need to see a partnership with BELTRAIDE together. We will be developing young minds and will be training young entrepreneurs and that will auger well for the development of Belize."

Mike Singh - CEO, Ministry of Trade
"We already have an office here at the campus. We are now going to be having discussions in respect to putting a permanent building on the campus. We staff it with our own people."

Harrison Pilgrim
"We are looking for openings in the opportunities that are available for the service industries, the areas that have provided thousands of jobs recently and it seems to have an unending capacity for development and growth."

Mike Singh
"If I get one young entrepreneur to develop a small business and he hires 10 people, 5 might be other graduates, so the good thing about it it's really an exponential increase in being able to not only give them an opportunity but to expand the employment opportunities throughout. You have the same companies that are trying to hire, they may not be expanding as fast as we would like them to. We have foreign investors coming in that are hiring but again, not at the rate that we would like to see it happen, so we like to see our own home grown ideas, innovation being turned into small business and those people then contributing to add to the job stock."

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