By Belize Live News Staff: When neighbours plan the roads, borders and cargo systems everyone will use for the next fifty years, there are two places to be: at the table or on the sidelines. On August 12 in Panama City, Belize chose the table.
Narda Garcia, CEO in the Office of the Prime Minister and Belize’s Alternate Governor to the IDB, and Cinnamon Bottaro, our representative on the IDB’s Board of Directors, joined ministers of finance, transport and trade from across the region for the América en el Centro dialogue, the IDB’s push to make Central America, Panama and the Dominican Republic more connected and competitive.
The agenda was the unglamorous machinery that decides prices on every Belizean shelf: better roads, faster border crossings, modern customs, and Cargo Pass, a system for moving cargo across borders with speed and traceability. Anyone who has waited on goods stuck at a border knows why that matters. Faster borders mean cheaper imports, fresher exports and Belizean producers competing on equal footing.
Then there is the card only Belize holds. We are the one country in both SICA and CARICOM, which makes us the natural hinge between Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean. Played right, Belize does not just join the region’s new trade network, it becomes a crossroads in it.
The systems being designed today will outlive every government at that table. Being in the room from day one is the whole game.
