A Showcase on Ambergris Caye

By: Omar Silva I Editor/Publisher

National Perspective Belize – Digital 2025

www.nationalperspectivebz.com

Belize City: Monday. 1st September 2025: Once again, San Pedro, Ambergris Caye, is transformed into Belize’s grand showcase stage. Since its inaugural edition in 2021, the Belize Investment Summit has been billed as the country’s premier forum to attract foreign direct investment. The government has marketed the event as a biennial gathering of global investors, policymakers, and entrepreneurs under the banner of themes such as “Belize: Open for Business”, “Endless Opportunities”, and this year’s “Bridging Markets, Building Resilience.”

With keynote speakers ranging from former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper to Colombia’s former President Iván Duque Márquez, and now major regional business leaders like Adam Stewart of Sandals Resorts, the Summit has been staged to present Belize as a regional hub—a bridge connecting CARICOM, Central America, and southern Mexico.

But three summits later, beneath the polished presentations and glossy brochures, lies a sobering truth: the promised transformation has yet to materialize.

Tourism Rules the Stage

Every edition of the Summit has spotlighted investors with big ambitions. Yet, nearly all the headline projects have come from the tourism and resort sector—new hotel developments, luxury properties, or expansions of established brands.

Tourism is undeniably important to Belize’s economy, but its dominance in the investment spotlight reveals a larger problem: industrial, manufacturing, and agro-processing projects—the real engines of economic independence—remain absent.

Instead of factories producing finished goods, food processing plants creating export-ready products, or renewable energy companies setting up regional operations, the spotlight has been monopolized by tourism. And while tourism generates employment, the jobs are often seasonal, low-paying, and dependent on global travel trends.

Concessions, Not Transformation

What has come to define the Investment Summit is not groundbreaking industries, but rather a parade of concessions and incentives.

Investors are courted with tax holidays, duty-free imports of materials, and generous fiscal packages, allowing them to reduce local obligations while maximizing returns. Once profits are made, most are spirited abroad to banks in Miami, Toronto, or Panama, leaving Belize with little more than salaries and upkeep costs.

In this model, Belize bears the costs—lost tax revenues, environmental strains, and land use concessions—while foreign investors reap the gains. It is an extractive cycle dressed up as development.

A Country of Untapped Potential

This outcome is not inevitable. Belize possesses enormous untapped capacity for industrial growth:

Agribusiness & Value-Added Exports: Our sugar, citrus, cacao, and seafood industries remain primarily raw exporters. With processing plants, packaging facilities, and branding strategies, Belize could multiply export value and create high-skilled jobs.

Renewable Energy & Green Technology: With hydropower, solar, and biomass potential, Belize could attract investors in sustainable energy, reducing imports and lowering costs for households.

Digital Services: Belize’s English-speaking, youthful workforce is ideally positioned for growth in software development, BPO services, fintech, and digital trade.

Light Manufacturing & Assembly: Furniture, textiles, food products, and electronics assembly could all be competitive sectors with proper investment.

Yet these areas remain consistently absent from the Summit’s announcements.

Three Summits, Same Results

From 2021 through 2023, and now in 2025, the story has remained the same. Despite the fanfare, there is no evidence of new factories, agro-processing plants, or manufacturing hubs emerging directly from the Summits.

Tourism dominates. Concessions prevail. And Belizeans are left asking: what has really been gained?

Beyond Showcases, Toward Sovereignty

Belize does not need more polished speeches, international keynotes, or marketing fairs. What it needs is tangible investment that builds national capacity: factories that process Belizean goods, industries that create high-paying jobs, and renewable energy projects that lower costs and increase self-sufficiency.

Without this, the Investment Summit will remain what it has been so far—a spectacle of ambition on Ambergris Caye. A showcase of dreams that mask the reality: Belize is still waiting for investment that truly transforms.

Closing Call

The Belizean people deserve more than promises and press releases. They deserve a government willing to demand investments that build Belize, not strip it.

Until the Investment Summit shifts from selling the dream to building the reality, it will remain just that—a dream deferred, staged on San Pedro’s shoreline while the real work of economic independence goes undone.