MSMEs Drive Employment as Businesses Struggle to Fill Vacancies

Micro and small businesses are making a mark in the country’s economy as many have sought to become self-employed.  It is one of the contributing factors to the low unemployment rate across the country, and the challenges now faced by business owners in filling job vacancies.  Andrew Usher of the Belize Chamber of Commerce and Industry confirmed this fact when he indicated to Love News that the chamber’s membership has reflected an increase in MSMEs.  As a matter of fact, he indicated that there has been a notable shift in the employment sector.

Andrew Usher, Public Relations Manger, BCCI: “People are saying, know what? I want to have a better control of my finances in terms of how I make my money, what I need to spend on these things. So people are becoming more entrepreneurial. We see it at our events in terms of whenever we have expos we see more and more people coming into the market with different products and services that they’re offering. And we encourage that spirit of entrepreneurship here at the Chamber.  But also I think it’s just people are looking for different opportunities. I think one spell in the job market people had to settle. You might have studied a specific field  and the vacancies might not have been available at the time and I could tell you, I mean, you might know it yourself just in terms of how we normally talk in general terms.  One spell you would say, oh everybody’s taking business. Everybody’s studying business, but there’s not so many jobs in business available. Now that you look at all of these vacancies that are here a lot of them tie into business. So sales, customer service, even IT to some degree because you have to tie it back into the business.  These are the types of positions that are becoming, that have already been available, but they’ve become even more so. But there’s also opportunities in terms of the technical fields that wasn’t there before that, you know, it was almost like there was only like a group of, if you want to call it like a group of people that really were really good in IT, really good in financial analysis, really good in engineering. Now more and more people are studying these things. AI is becoming prevalent across the globe and so I know certain businesses here in Belize that are even creating departments to be able to support people in IT who are coming out. They need those financial advisors, people who can  analyze data and use it to really formulate answers for upper management.”