COMPARABLE ECONOMICS END OF 2010, BELIZE vs VENEZUELA

COMPARABLE ECONOMICS BELIZE vs VENEZUELA

December and now January has seen inflation of food prices about 23% in Belize. We are not talking about the increase in gasoline, or butane. My tank of butane cost me $124 yesterday to refill.

Businesses and individuals are fighting hard to get foreign currency, dollars for importing, or doing business abroad. I myself am looking for dollars starting around March and June when I need them for business. The illegal trade in dollars is not meeting demand.

The street job person is complaining of unemployment. The trades people are dropping their prices for work, e.g. masons and carpenters from $45 a day to $35 a day. Shop jobs as clerks are dropping to $100 from $125 a week.

Over 70 people and $15 million of mortgaged locally owned cruise ship shuttle boats were in the news as they got cut out of the business this week. Carnival Cruise lines has hired an outside foreign outfit with larger capacity passenger capability to do the shuttle services. New bigger catamaran speedboats are now running the tourist season. They need to move thousands ashore and back again and still be able to travel to Mayan ruins within a scheduled 4 hour visit. Local shuttle services were deemed too small and time wasteful. Those and most of them are in hock for millions with the local banks, for their boats and motors, are now going to go bankrupt and the jobs are lost. The cruise ship shuttle business is based on TIME ashore allowable by the ship schedule.
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Venezuela

Saw 26% inflation for 2010. Food prices in Venezuela have risen 33% and the Central Bank is trying to hold inflation between 23% to 25% per year. US dollars are hard to get and there is an illegal trade in them in Venezuela, just like Belize.