Belize Takes Major Step Toward Modern Competition Oversight

Belize has begun laying the groundwork for its first-ever competition law, launching a national push this week to curb market dominance and strengthen oversight across key industries. As officials and regional experts meet in Belmopan to shape the new framework, the Ministry of Foreign Trade is also rolling out a two‑month stakeholder consultation, ensuring voices from every sector help design a system that protects consumers, encourages innovation, and aligns Belize with its CSME counterparts.

 

Berisford Codd, Senior Trade Economist, Ministry of Foreign Trade

“Now what that does for us, it ensures we have laws and regulations in place to make our markets fair, meaning to dominant business suppliers and providers that take advantage of the market, to ensure consumers can get access to better prices, better choices and for businesses to be encouraged to innovate much more so than they would if we have monopolies or dominant market situations. All the CSME member states for the most part have their own competition framework. Belize does not as yet. So we are developing our own competition framework that we can then integrate with the region framework. So, for us it is really to set our national law in place, get our local authority in place and start monitoring markets a lot better. I know everybody will recall some of the price gouging which was all the rage coming out of COVID. Having your competition authority in place gives you an additional tool in place to monitor those markets to make sure they are operating fairly and optimally for the benefit of the consumer but also for the benefit of the business person.”