Email

Print

7news was there and we found out more about how this project will help to grow the economy:

Dr. Naresh Singh - Executive Director, CARILED
"This project must deliver concrete results. And I want to say publicly what those results might be that this project may be held accountable by the people of Belize, the stakeholders, and the Government over time, so that you know what we are trying to deliver and hold us accountable. So, the hard things, the things that you can measure the success of this project by, will be the number of small, micro and medium businesses that emerge, either as new ones, or as existing ones that grow over the life of our project, and its influence on them; the number of jobs that have been created; the capacity that Local Government will have in engaging with the private sector; and Soft target - which is not easy to measure - is the trust, the confidence, and the partnership that will result between local governments, municipalities across the country, and the private sector. That is what we are promising to deliver on this project. We take this very seriously. We do not treat Canadian tax-payers' dollars, and the investment of your energy and your time lightly. We hope that this project will be successful, and that it will deliver those things. The approach that will be taken is that if you're making more progress, we will invest more, simply as that, incentive-based - performance based. So, you deliver more, and we'll work with you more because we want to demonstrate what works. It is not one of the traditional programs that says that Belize gets $200,000 or a million dollars, Jamaica gets 5 million dollars, and then the Government says, 'Well, this is our money anyway, we don't have to perform. They're going to give us anyhow.' We don't do it like that."

Hon. Godwin Hulse - Minister of Local Government
"This will result in the following hopefully: more products on the Belizean market - possible to substitute for imports; products going abroad; people having more monies in the bank; more jobs created, and we can then add to the number of projects and things that we presently have. That is the delivery at the end of the day, and that is going to happen. As we develop the projects, we want to make sure that the people behind those projects have ownership of those projects, that it is their project, that they can move on, and that no politician - at any time - or no government can come and say, 'This will close down.' That is where we are going. I am here to tell you our Government is committed to making that happen."

Dr. Naresh Singh
"I have seen areas and examples of eco-agro-tourism itself, the backboard linkages to the small and medium enterprises, including handicraft manufacturing. We have seen the potential for agro-processing. You have fruits, why is it we don't product plum jam, and be selling this to North America? All the exogenous, exotic fruits, and other things you have hear, you add value by processing. Now, we've been talking about this in the Caribbean for 50 years. And as you can see, that's long before I was born, but it has not happened. We have learned some lessons about why it's not happening. Some of those lessons are the wrong scale technologies. So, you have mangoes; you set up a mango canning factory, a huge factory. You only have mangoes for 3 months, and then the factory is standing still. If on the other hand - like we are already doing - you set up village-level, or even home-level juicers, and you have a little truck that picks it up, takes it to a pasteurization plant, you might have work all year work with juice and everything selling."

Hon. Godwin Hulse
"This is the whole idea. The local government agencies, meaning the Belize City Council - to be exact - and the San Pedro Town Council, and in the river valley, the association of village councils, which is called DAVCO, or the little agencies through which one of the coordinators will be working, so in practical terms, somebody has a business, contact that person, or that person will contact you. The idea is to be able to bring together that person's idea, his small business, find some money - which is all over the place, there's lots of money - find a market, and get that project going. That's the tangible; that's the deliverable. And in our ministry, will be housed the national coordinator, who will be seeing to it that this is happening. So, from my perspective, personally, we will be pushing and pushing - as Dr. Singh says - to see which new business came, how fast it came, what the impediments were, and how quick we can get you off the ground."

Jules Vasquez
"Money management is also an issue that people may make a little money, and instead of re-investing it in their business, they go on a one-week spree. These things happen. Explain to me, how will you safeguard, or how will you best try to safeguard these projects against the vagaries of human misconduct?"

Hon. Godwin Hulse
"There is a component that is trying to train people, and improve their capacity to try to keep good books, what to do, how to record, when, how to write a plan, what is important, what is not, so that people know that as you said, 'We have $2,000 remaining this week. That's not our money; maybe only $100 is our money. The rest has to go back. And this is beginning to work."

CARILED is a six year project which will support nearly 50 local governments and agencies by targeting more than 500 small and medium size enterprises.