7 News Belize

Exporting Tourism Services?
posted (March 18, 2013)
As we've reported, Belize is in the process of hammering out a partial scope trade agreement with El Salvador and we already enjoys a robust trade agreement with Mexico. But that trade is mostly for goods….so what about services? Well, today BELTRAIDE held a meeting with the tourism sector to get them up to speed with the services that can be covered under these trade arrangements. We found out more:

Yashin Dujon - Director of Foreign Trade
"What we've done is we've invited the members and the representatives from the entire sector here today, to share with us in finding out what areas they wish to explore in Mexico, and what services they wish to share and actually export as a part of their sector."

Abel Casteneda - Acting Chief Tourism Officer, Min Of Tourism
"We decided that what we needed to do was to do a preliminary introductory workshop - training workshop for the tourism sector, to introduce them to what is a trade negotiation, what the different types of agreement that exist are, and what Belize would want to participate in."

Yashin Dujon
"We also have a unique niche here in Belize, being the only CARICOM state on the main land. We have a lot of unique properties, the only English speaking country, very small population, lots of natural resources and a lot of tourist infrastructure that exist here. Many of the other countries do not possess these things. So our strategic advantage along with the Ministry of Tourism now is looking at using these points to attract and to draw not only tourist, but to draw investors, to draw interest into the country."

David Diaz - Consultant, Foreign Trade and Industry
"I think one of the main trends of Belize is the Geographical position, the other is the diversity of assets. It's an agricultural economy, with very beautiful land. I can see that Belize is like a Jewel in the center of America, because it has everything that you need to take advantage of trade flows."

The session lasts two days.

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