The shoe repair shop on wheels…bicycle wheels.

The first Belizean yoghurt company. A couple from Chicago making their product in 5 gallon buckets in their kitchen at night.

3 single American girls supporting themselves by delivering freshly baked pizzas on motorscooters.

None of these people got rich, but they all lived where they wanted and  worked  how and when they wanted, which in some cases was very little.The couple who started the yoghurt business worked 1 day and 1 night a week to support themselves and their 2 young children.

The simplicity and ease with which one can start a business in Belize lets many people do something they have always wanted to try but weren’t able to back home. I remember a 70 something retiree who had owned a hearing aid business in Southern California who told me he had always dreamed of having a donut business.When he went  to Texas in the early 1960’s  he noticed there were no California style donut shops. He felt he could make a killing in donuts, but when his wife discouraged him and he added up what it would cost him to buy the equipment he needed and to rent the business space he didn’t even try, something he always regretted.

We loved seeing this older gentleman so alive and enjoying his little business so much, even when he was on crutches recovering from a motorcycle accident he was euphorically hobbling around his kitchen overseeing the baking. Eventually when he decided he had had enough of the donut business he simply hung up a hand painted sign that  said “No more donuts”, no expensive equipment to sell off, no lease to try and get out of, just “No more donuts.”  Being free from all the bureaucratic red tape, and expensive, complicated  procedures, frees a person to put all their creative energy into their business. We love seeing owners of even the smallest of businesses empowered like this.

Belize is now the third largest domicile for offshore businesses in the Caribbean-Central American basin, behind only the Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands.

This is remarkable since offshore legislation just began to be written in Belize in the early 1990’s.

And in a time when many traditional offshore jurisdicitons are adding more controls and restricitions, Belize is doing just the opposite , making the system here more user- friendly. Belize now has it’s sights set on becoming a leading offshore e-commerce center. Some think that the Belize web extension “.bz” , will come to mean business in a domain name.
 

In an effort to attract investors, the government of Belize has established an Export Processing  Free Zone(EPZ).The idea behind it is to combine Belize’s offshore financial services with state of the art technology.

The zone is located 13 miles outside Belize City on the Northern Highway in Ladyville, just a few minutes away from the Philip Goldson international airport.

Busineses in the EPZ enjoy the following benefits: