Belize Seeks Investors for Emerging Industries and National Bus System

Since 2020, Belize has been pushing to diversifying its economy through the Ministry of New Growth Industries, moving beyond traditional sectors like seafood, citrus, banana, and sugar. Emerging industries such as cohune, hemp, seaweed, and film are now in focus, with value-added products and public-private partnerships opening the door for new investment opportunities. While under the Ministry of Transport, the government is working towards boosting Belize’s economy by modernizing the bus system to improve connectivity and productivity. Meanwhile, under the Ministry of Transport, the government is hoping to modernize the bus system to improve connectivity and boost productivity. At the Belize Investment Summit, Minister Kareem highlighted the potential of these new growth industries, while Minister Zabaneh outlined plans to attract investment for the national bus company.

 

Kareem Musa, Minister of New Growth Industry

“For us at the Ministry of New Growth Industries, what we’re really focused on is creating the regulatory framework, the policy initiatives, and of course, the law to assist public-private partnerships in cohoon industry, in cannabis, in particular hemp, in the film industry, and in seaweed. So those are our four primary focus targets for the last year.”

 

Paul Lopez

“What’s the chances of investments coming out of this summit?”

 

Kareem Musa

“Huge, huge, because as you might know, seaweed, for instance, that’s considered a superfood, with ninety-two essential nutrients. And there are so many opportunities for manufacturing, for processing, for adding value. Because while it is that you can sell seaweed in its raw form to the international market, you really fetch a very low value. And so what we want to focus on for Belize is creating value-added products. And so there’s a huge, huge opportunity there.”

 

Paul Lopez

“For seaweed.”

 

Kareem Musa

“For cohoon, for hemp, all of these value-added products.”

 

Dr. Louis Zabaneh, Minister of Transport

“In sharing what we’re doing, we have potential investors who, some of them have reached out because we have various components of the consolidation. So for example, we have the modernization of the terminals, we have the renewal of the fleet, we have systems for scheduling, we have the overall modernization requires the use of modern technology, all of that. You have different interested parties who have already contacted us, and possibly here at the investment summit, some of them may also show some interest.”