An alternative suggestion to producing economic aid for boot strap entrepreneurial startups in Belize

The recent press release by the appointed agency BELTRAIDE in assisting small micro financed start ups, leaves much to be desired. While touted as successful in an industrialized country, it lacks the imagination to adapt the results to our local environment. Which is a much more difficult business environment than say the USA. The adoption of this model by BELTRAIDE, which as I understand it, will not actually do any work of a productive kind, is typical do nothing and find excuses later, by the entrenched bureaucratic mind. From what they said, they are going to have High Schools and possibly COLLEGES district wide, produce the needed information by computer research. Business plans, sources, market data information, prices, shipping, material and equipment costs, etc. This means voluntary, diversified, without anybody special being RESPONSIBLE, AND ACCOUNTABLE, for producing research product. NOT GOING TO WORK IN BELIZE FOR SURE. It is a WASTE OF TIME. TIME is something the economy and the nation no longer has. I can understand the rational. The government being broke, it has no money to pay salaries or hire anybody. So are looking through BELTRAIDE, a bull manure verbiage government factory, to spin the wheels and hot air bombast, while reports and hot air full of excuses are the rule of the day. To my mind, give me two dedicated Bachelor degree people with business and marketing background, pay them a salary, I will even supervise them if you want, FREE OF CHARGE. Like our fabulous GRANT WRITERS in the bureaucracy, we need to produce and very fast. In four years the oil exports are due to reduce to a trickle and 25% of our government revenues will likewise disappear. What I envision is a 30 day production period for research on possibilities of things for export, for any number of ideas. You cover all the data needed and compile it into a book, or booklet, like a magazine. Then disseminate same all over the nation, FREE OF CHARGE. Perhaps as a newspaper insert. Readers and would be entrepreneurs, would get their ideas, the possibilities from this booklet. This would be a method of jump starting, or bootstrapping entrepreneurs into becoming producers. Could produce it quarterly and keep adding on the products and ideas and information on HOW TO. Eventually the booklet would become quite thick. If you updated the source material, costs and other info, a much easier task, each year. Heaven only knows where the country could go in development. I've got so many ideas of my own, but lack the time to pursue them.

GOB APPOINTS BELTRAIDE TO HELP PRODUCERS LEARN TO EXPORT.

FAMOUS GEORGE SOROS, FOREIGN EXCHANGE TRADER, KING OF THE HEAP SAYS; DRASTIC AUSTERITY MEASURES, SHRINKING THE ECONOMY AND GDP, CANNOT REDUCE THE DEBT BURDEN OF COUNTRIES WITH POOR POLITICAL MANAGEMENT. HE SAYS, YOU CAN ONLY GROW YOUR WAY OUT OF DEBT AS A NATION. LACK OF OR INADEQUATE INTERNATIONAL EXPORTS AND COMPETITIVENESS AND THE BANKING SYSTEM ARE MORE AT FAULT _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ IN THAT REGARD WITHIN BELIZE: Answering criticism of the political government of UDP for leadership, the latest blurb in the REPORTER newspaper, of Belize, a weekly and leading newspaper, was a press release by BELTRAIDE, the until now, must useless government department ever designed by our politicians. Originally intended as a sink hole for salaried jobs for party faithful, party hacks and nepotism favorites, so far in it's long life it hasn't produced a darned thing, that we could say is useful. At least none that we in the public are aware of. One of the things BELTRAIDE is good at, is pointing the finger, blowing rhetoric and hot air, padding the department with high sounding phrases and reports justifying their salaries and of course LOTS OF EXCUSES. Interestingly enough, the political cabinet was challenged to produce a government department to answer requests in the public media for Business Plans, Feasability studies and market research for producers of small agro-processing ideas, along with equipment identification and sources to get started. Considering most producers do not have a computer, the technical help would be paramount. Unfortunately, the press release doesn't really tackle the problem. They are making their excuses already. While BELTRAIDE has been identified as the government department tasked to do the necessary planning and research work, they in turn are following the usual political format of blame shifting, finger pointing and excuse making. At least there is one small iota of improvement. We now know we can blame BELTRAIDE for things not done. However, NOBODY is either named, or assigned for responsibility and accountability within that government department. So who can you check on from the public sector? They say, that they will ONLY work on a ONE on ONE, interview, in THEIR OFFICE ( it costs money to go to Belmopan and days of lost work, for impractical results, but bull manure. What BELTRAIDE are avoiding, Mr. member of the political cabinet, is responsibility and accountability. You and we, are being snowed under with verbiage. What we the private sector want and need, is production by BELTRAIDE of unsolicited regular ideas, and information, regarding new products we can produce, process and export. We need the WHAT, WHERE, HOW, SELL to who for how much, costs involved and all that stuff. Producers don't have the TIME, or KNOWLEDGE TO DO THIS SORT OF RESEARCH PRODUCTION. When BELTRAIDE say they will only respond to ONE on ONE requests, and work with producers for export. What they mean is the producer will have to do ALL THE WORK and BELTRAIDE will tout it as THEIR ACCOMPLISHMENT, in their monthly and annual reports. Development doesn't work that way. BELTRAIDE need to do the work, all the feasability studies, business management plans, production of product ideas, transportation, equipment requirement sources and costs, provide the buyers in foreign lands, etc. Let BELTRAIDE since that is the designated department using our tax dollars, start with a few markets and ideas we already know would work. PICKLED ONIONS, SUGAR CUBES, HERBAL MEDICAL SUPPLEMENTS, SOLAR PANELS FABRICATION AND EXPORT ( to Guatemala and Salvador ), small steam powered generators ( 5 to 15 hp ), hammock making, spices, specialized herbal tea bags and cartons, match factory, etc. Just produce the darned stuff, in magazine, or booklet form complete from A to Z and distribute same. Be glad to print the stuff on my International Blog, with over 12,000 readers per month for things Belizean. This is what is called jump starting, or lifting the poor remote producer up by their boot straps. Have their researchers SIGN the research work, so we can know the quality of the sources. ( accountability ) Just produce the booklets on such export ideas with ALL the necessary information, so a producer can start the ball rolling. It is too slow and too expensive, the current BELTRAIDE way. We need a finished product out of BELTRAIDE, not imaginative excuses.

Rainy Season in Belize brings torrential rains to destroy small farmer crops.

Torrential rains this past weekend, resulted in losses to small farmers of market gardening crops, in rows and greenhouses in the Belize River Valley. Small farmers are reporting crop losses anywhere from $10,000 to $50,000. At least a dozen major producers were effected on their family market gardening vegetable operations. First time they say, they have EVER seen this in that area, even during Hurricanes. Tomatoes, melon and bell peppers are reported total losses. At least one greenhouse was destroyed due to heavy torrential rains. Out in Hillview, which is built on the slope of GREEN PARROT VALLEY, we get torrential rains and it collects along the higher ridge of the suburb, up the hill. This time, the sheet of water from the water logged soil, came pouring down on our house and flooded the upper level ( on the slope ) room on the slope. We had a veritable creek of rushing water, blocking the sheet of water pouring down the house yards on the hill above us, and piled up against the side of the house and forced it's way around the side of the house and out the front gate, to pour into the street side ditch. Very fast water pressure indeed. A small fast moving river about a foot deep and 4 feet wide.

Placentia Lagoon fishing in Belize - the Nation of Eternal Spring

Placentia Lagoon fishing in Belize.Why not live in paradise, the nation of eternal spring?

THE END OF THE EU IN IT'S CURRENT FORM?

INVESTORS ARE ANTICIPATING A MELTDOWN OF THE EUROPEAN UNION There doesn't seem to be any alternative to a meltdown of the EU. GREECE has unsustainable debt and Germany is the only one making money inside the EU. The Financial markets are saying, that capital flight from the EURO into DOLLARS is ongoing, as is also from ASIAN COUNTRIES. Even though the USA is not paying any interest rates to store foreign capital exchanged into dollars. Without a FEDERATION, of the EU in which sovereignty is surrendered, as individual states managing budgets, seems to signal eventually, the END, of the EU in it's current form. A high standard of living in the EU, supported by high taxes and socialist systems that need productivity to finance, through escalating taxes, seems to signal the END. On the productivity part, it would seem that all the European MANUFACTURING PRODUCERS have moved to the American Continent, particularly Latin America. Business is booming there for them. But they are no longer European, they are South and Central American. It may be EURO money capital flight, but the jobs and manufacturing have gone to the Americas.

POLITICAL LEADERSHIP LACKING, IN BELIZE? AGRO PROCESSING EXPORTING.

LETS GET PRO-ACTIVE WITH AGRO PROCESSING AND EXPORTING. HOW? Well let us as citizens demand our political government, get the bureaucratic administrators of departments involved with this agro-processing exporting business, start ACCOUNTING for what they are doing? We've hired in recent times, a lot of educated academics supposed to be gung ho, and with ability to foster this industry. How about we require the names of the department administrators, the person, as in also the academic technician, so assigned to work on this business. Their TITLE and NAME. For example: We know growing LEEKS, by hydroponics ( flat slightly slanted ) cement slab type, ebb and flow bed, will grow year round, all the LEEKS you could want, from real time experiments over past 10 years. LEEKS are small bulb onions. They are sold in local markets. You chop off the marble sized onion, wash them and put them in plastic jars, like peanut butter jars, sealed in with vinegar. You export them by the container load. A delicacy, pickled onions. Heck, we even import them occasionally. How to get this started and while we have talked about it for the last five years, we are no further ahead today, than five years ago. How about these educated bureaucratic clerical types with degrees in marketing and business, be assigned the project. Give us the names of those responsible, so we can keep track of their work. We would need them to make a business plan. A feasibility study. We need in these reports, information like; who the market buyer would be in the two China's, or in Japan, for a container per month, of preserved onions such as these? Cost of container, shipping costs, price FOB our port. We need a study on the lithographer, business seperately, who would start a business making cardboard boxes locally, to house the plastic jars of onions. We probably would need a study report on the costs of buying and setting up an injection molding machine, to make the plastic bottles and caps. Mr. Canton is an expert at this stuff, working for the citrus factory. Dot all the i's and cross the t's. Give the bureaucrats 30 to 60 days to do the research and type up the feasibility study, the business plan for the financing and outlining all the steps from A to Z. If somebody with a Bachelors can't do this, then they should not be in the job. Failure to produce the studies in the time frame, would mean loss of job, and replacement by somebody else. We only have 4 years to get this industry going in all manner of foodstuffs. The world markets are there, but local producers want to produce, can produce, but lack the info needed for processing costs and marketing contacts. Our oil will be GONE IN THE NEXT 5 YEARS, and around 25% of our ANNUAL BUDGET MONEY, if we don't get moving. I will print all the studies and reports on my BLOG, maybe that will stimulate some outside investment? PICKLED ONIONS PRODUCED IN BELIZE. LEEKS PRODUCED IN BELIZE

EXPAT BUILDING RETIREMENT HOUSE IN SAN JOSE SUCCOTZ

CHARLIES TREW'S, FUTURE RETIREMENT HOUSE IN THE SMALL WESTERN TOWN OF SAN JOSE SUCCOTZ, BELIZE. ACROSS THE WHITE WATER RAPIDS OF THE MOPAN RIVER, BELOW THE HIGH HILL WITH THE XUNANTINICH MAYAN TEMPLE RUINS. Charlie is an avid explorer of Mayan ruins and goes exploring into all the newer excavations by archeologists throughout the PETEN across the border. Charlie has his house rented as he is too young to retire up there in Washington D.C. yet. Still, he makes several trips a year to add onto his house here in Belize. He is now working on completing his second story upstairs. Beautiful spot, San Jose Succotz with a very active town life for children, with bands, and parades and sports and all that stuff.