GOLD RUSH JUST STARTING IN BELIZE

* From Pirates to Penny Gold Mine stocks in Belize. The opportunities are endless limited only to your imagination.



THE BELIZE GOLD RUSH IS JUST GETTING STARTED!

By Ray Auxillou, July 22, 2009

When we talk of the Belize Gold rush, we are not talking about the gold mine in the Southern Belize Alps. We are talking about something else. The smell in the air is of BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY. One can sense and feel the opportunities that are not yet being taken by residents and the new generation. As in all GOLD RUSHES, it will probably be IMMIGRANTS that will come to Belize to exploit our BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES.
Belize is small, but not too small to develop EXPORT industries. Earning FOREIGN EXCHANGE is the GOLD in this early pioneering GOLD RUSH atmosphere. We are not as small as say Cayman Islands. Nor as Nevis, or St. Kitts. We are big enough to develop and build industries that will EXPORT and like CHINA, it is in the exporting for foreign exchange, that the new rich of Belize will come from.
Belize has something that is unique, and that is a BRAND NAME quality. Something that is labeled, MADE IN BELIZE, or perhaps PRODUCED IN BELIZE, or PACKAGED IN BELIZE. We are unlikely to sell things by the millions, but surely small solid niche markets can be found. Whether you make it here in Belize, or import products and repackage, or combine things to make a new brand name; the thing is, the BRAND NAME of Belize, when attached to QUALITY and LOW PRICE will ALWAYS find a market someplace in the world.
We lack sometimes a pro-active leadership type of government. We need some infra-structure. Electricity reliability, water reliability and of course in today’s business world, we need wide spread nationwide internet and telephone service. ( which we haven’t got ) Some of the facets of business require either a DUTY FREE ZONE, or BONDED WAREHOUSE areas, to repackage, or reprocess, or add value added technology applications before exporting on our Western Border, or the Southern border. I am mindful for instance, of the time during the PUP administration when the politicians looking for braggadocious sound bites announced a DUTY FREE ZONE along the Benque Viejo WESTERN BORDER. Thinking of starting several small export businesses, a few years later, the wife and I went looking for this ZONE to buy a lot, to build a BONDED WAREHOUSE, in which to do some ideas we had for export. We thought we could import stuff from Guatemala and Salvador and repackage and then export. We still talk about it, but nowadays we discuss buying a couple of lots in Melchor de Menchos across the border and indeed have even gone looking at them earlier this year. A shining example was GUYANA, which are reputed to be importing RICE in bulk from Guatemala and repackaging and exporting to the world. Alas, we found the boulevard on the edge of Benque Viejo Town that looks like it was built and designed to be such a FREE ZONE, but wasn’t. At least not yet. Without the ability to avoid the nuisance of dealing with bureaucratic customs border, red tape, the scheme collapsed in our efforts to find a way to do the business we had in mind. If you are going to re-export you certainly do not want to be paying customs duties on raw materials that are being imported to be value added processed for EXPORT. You would lose the edge of a competitive LOW PRICE. That must be at least six or seven years ago and in all that time since; there has been no political leadership to create and fulfill the innovative promise announced by politicians back then. Then of course there is the lethargy in political circles of the CABINET in dealing with a simple thing that costs NO MONEY, to make available bus service to terminate at the Border Immigration point building, instead of the park , two miles or more away in the center of Benque Viejo Town. To date, nothing has been done by the Transportation Minister, or the CABINET on this issue. It is this laziness, this apathy, the lethargy, the lack of commitment in our political circles that is holding DEVELOPMENT of our GOLD RUSH back. Much of these things, do not even cost money, so that is not an excuse. Just vibrant progressive leadership, which seems to be sadly lacking. TIME PASSING of course for people on government salaries mean nothing to them. They get paid anyway. Weeks turn into months and months turn into years and still nothing progressive gets done by our politicians. Yet to the hungry business opportunist pioneering in the GOLD RUSH of Belize, a person must get RAPID and very fast returns, or STARVE, or go look elsewhere to another country. The pioneers of this GOLD RUSH are coming in right now in trickles. This could turn into a FLOOD given encouragement. New generations of business entrepreneurs are being FRUSTRATED by the LACK OF ACTION and leadership from our CABINET, who seem inordinately involved in get rich quick schemes of their own person.
CORPORAL PUNISHMENT is a subject being debated right now in our school system. In Saudi Arabia they have a dress code and volunteer RELIGIOUS POLICE, that carry a bamboo cane and go around whipping people on legs and arms that are not morally correct in their dress code on the streets of their society. I think what I would like to see in Belize is a BUSINESS POLICE, a person who can volunteer with a quarter inch, six foot long bamboo cane and would go around WHIPPING, legally by law, CABINET POLITICIANS that are not aggressive enough in developing our nation of Belize. Something to think about. ( hic! grin! )
In the meantime, a recent article by Trevor Vernon, explained the advantages of HONDURAS over Belize in a comparison study, in which the business atmosphere is progressive, the prices of living half of what they are in Belize, infra structural services like telecommunications and energy supplies, less than half the cost in Belize. The wife said after reading that; maybe we should go investigate HONDURAS. Indeed so we should, my nephew did and is succeeding. If we were not so old? I love the atmosphere of the GOLD RUSH in Central America, the myriad OPPORTUNITIES that are open to getting rich, or at least financially comfortable middle class. I guess I’m a pioneer entrepreneur at heart, one of the GOLD RUSH crowd. Just disappointed at the failures of leadership in CABINET circles of both our administrations, past and present. If a project does not seem to feed the self-enrichment appetites of the port of Belize City politicians, controlling our government, they seem not to care, or be interested in the rest of the development possibilities of the rest of the country? We take one step forward and slip back four steps it seems like?