Belize business life – Marie Sharp and other women

A local businesswoman - in this case running her own little restaurant (with excellent cowfoot soup nonetheless!)

I think that Belize’s future to a very large extent lies with the women, but let me get back to that.

To understand Belize’s economy, it is important to understand that it is a very small economy – not more than 260.000 people live in the whole country! As such, they don’t really have the economy of scale to even have any decent-size corporations, and even less so a decent government!

But then most Belizeans don’t believe they have a decent government either... They have two parties here that have been taking turns winning the elections since democracy started in 1981. But no one seems to care that much, since it’s so corrupted anyway. Getting to power seems to be more about grabbing as much as possible to your self during your mandate period, rather than doing anything good for the country – at least that is the opinion of most people that I talk to. No wonder they get kicked out every other time!

It’s not really possible for me to make my own judgments in the short time I’ve spent here, but all external sources seems to agree that corruption is rampant here.

The only large companies they have here seem to be the infrastructure monopolies. There’s one for electricity, one for communication (buses), another for telecoms, etc. All privately owned, and the general public’s opinion is that their monopolies are protected by a corrupt government. Me I’m not so sure, the market is so small that the market might simply not be big enough for any more players?

So, the country seems to be run by corrupted fat white guys in suits, with the economy run by their likewise cousins. Where’s the hope then?

Well, in the women of course! It seems like most men are content with being employed by someone else in the industry or agriculture, but not the women. It might be that they simply aren’t welcome to the traditional jobs or that they prefer to run their own businesses, but one thing is clear: it’s with the women you can find the energy that this country needs.

Many of the women I meet are very resourceful, clever, and are doing good business. They might be lacking in ambition sometimes, but they have a very good positive role model for that: Marie Sharp.

Marie started to make her own pepper sauce (like a Tabasco, but MUCH much better) in her own kitchen and traveled herself to restaurants and sold them. These days she has a fair-size factory producing the stuff, some 100 employees, distribution in the states, and of course a web site. The stuff is on the tables of EVERY restaurant I’ve been to here, and it comes highly recommended!

She’s also diversified into chutneys and jam, but I haven’t tried those so I can’t say how good they are.

Marie now runs one of the biggest corporations in the country (yes, I SAID that the country was small!), and certainly the best known. Quite some role model for all of Belize’s hard-working women indeed!