Statistical Institute of Belize: Belize’s exports continue to fall while import expenses have been surging

Published by BBNTEAM at March 29, 2023

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Posted: Wednesday, March 29, 2023. 9:41 pm CST.

By Benjamin Flowers: The gap between Belize’s import expenditure and export revenue has been widening steadily over the years and has widened even more drastically over the past two years due to external factors, the Statistical Institute of Belize (SIB) reports.

Today, the SIB held a press conference where it presented several pieces of data including the country’s trade balance, which focuses on exports and imports only, not taking into consideration data from the services sector. The data covered the period 2010-2022.

“Spending on imports has been rising steadily only to have increased rapidly in the last two years due to the effect of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine; reaching to a point in 2022 where imports are almost three times that of exports,” explained Tiffany Vasquez Statistician II with the SIB.

“This picture, however, simply exposes one fact, that while imports have been going up, Belize’s exports have been declining for many years,” Vasquez continued.

The SIB’s External Trade Bulletin for the first two months of 2023, showed that merchandise imports for January and February amounted to $412.4 million, representing a 3.1 percent or $12.5 million increase from the same period last year when total imports were valued at $399.9 million.

Meanwhile, for the same two-month period, merchandise exports totaled $47.1 million, down 5.1 percent or $2.5 million from the same period last year, when total domestic exports were valued at $49.6 million.

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