THE HONOURABLE GENTLEMEN OF THE TRACTOR CLUB: Who Gets to Own Belize’s Economic Future?
Belize cannot lecture its people about working smarter while avoiding the uncomfortable history of who has been allowed to own businesses, accumulate capital, secure opportunity and shape the economy. The machete-to-tractor conversation is welcome. The question of who controls the machinery is rather more inconvenient.
There is something rather remarkable about a country that repeatedly tells its people to become more productive while remaining so reluctant to confront the conditions under which productive people are expected to operate. Belizeans are encouraged to study, acquire technical skills, establish businesses, embrace innovation and contribute to national development. They are told that the future belongs to those who can adapt, modernize and compete. Yet the national conversation becomes considerably less enthusiastic when the subject moves from individual ambition to the distribution of economic opportunity, institutional access and the concentration of commercial power.
In an October 28 report by Greater Belize Media, Cabinet Minister Dr. Louis Zabaneh offered an explanation for Belize’s relatively weak economic performance: low labour productivity. His illustration was straightforward. A worker using a machete clears a limited area in eight hours. A weed eater increases the amount of work completed. A riding mower increases it further, while a tractor represents another leap in productive capacity. The worker must receive the training necessary to operate the equipment, combining human capital with physical capital to generate greater economic output. It is an accessible analogy, and the underlying economic principle is sound.
But the analogy has a rather conspicuous omission. It tells us what happens when a worker receives access to better equipment. It does not tell us who owns that equipment, who finances its acquisition, who controls the land on which it operates, who receives the contracts generated by its use, or who determines which businesses are permitted to grow. The tractor does not arrive in an economic vacuum. It belongs to someone, it is purchased with capital, it operates within a market, and its productivity gains are distributed through an existing structure of ownership and power. Before Belize begins congratulating itself on the journey from machete to tractor, perhaps we ought to establish who has been holding the keys to the machinery.
THE COLONIAL ECONOMY DID NOT EXIST TO MAKE EVERYONE AN ENTREPRENEUR
Belize’s economic history cannot be separated from the colonial system through which the settlement developed. British Honduras emerged from an extractive economy built around timber, land, merchant capital and labour. Mahogany and logwood were central to the colonial export economy, while slavery and the racial hierarchy that accompanied it shaped access to property, political authority and economic independence. The objective was not to construct a society in which every person had an equal opportunity to become a commercial competitor. The economy was organized around the interests of those who controlled capital, land, trade and labour.
The history is more complicated than a convenient division between white plantation owners and Black workers. There were merchants, free people of colour, mixed-race property holders, enslavers, artisans and commercial families whose positions within the colonial economy were not identical. Some people of African ancestry accumulated substantial property and commercial influence while remaining subject to discriminatory legal and political restrictions. Others were denied the resources and opportunities necessary to escape dependence on wage labour. The existence of successful Black or mixed-race merchants did not mean that the economic system had become equal. It demonstrated that economic achievement could coexist with institutional discrimination.
The experience of George Hyde is particularly instructive. In 1827, Hyde petitioned British authorities for the civil and political rights denied to free people of colour. Although he was a successful merchant, he complained that his mother’s ancestry prevented him from serving as a juror, becoming a magistrate, holding a militia commission or occupying public office. His petition exposed the contradiction at the heart of colonial society: a man could acquire wealth through his own exertions and still be denied the institutional standing enjoyed by white subjects. The colonial authorities subsequently maintained a system in which access to political participation remained subject to restrictions and the influence of the established oligarchy.
The Hyde family’s history is therefore not an ornamental family anecdote to be inserted into a discussion about Belizean development. It is part of the country’s broader record of how commercial participation, social standing and institutional authority were distributed. George Hyde’s experience does not establish that every subsequent difficulty experienced by the family was the product of racial discrimination. It does, however, demonstrate that the ability to create wealth and the ability to exercise equal influence were historically separate matters. Belize should understand that distinction before it begins treating economic success as proof that the system has always rewarded merit fairly.
The subsequent history of the Hyde commercial interests also illustrates the scale of enterprise that existed in the settlement. James Hyde & Company, formed in 1846 through a partnership involving the local Hyde family and London merchant James Hodge, became the foundation of the British Honduras Company, registered in 1859. That enterprise was subsequently renamed the Belize Estate and Produce Company in 1875 and became one of the colony’s dominant landholding interests. The history of the company, its capital arrangements and its landholdings belongs to the wider story of how commercial power consolidated in nineteenth-century Belize.
Colonial economic structures did not disappear simply because the flag changed. Independence in 1981 transferred sovereign political authority to Belizeans, but it did not automatically distribute productive assets, commercial networks, capital or market access across the population. Nor did it erase inherited advantages. The country entered independence with an economy shaped by generations of concentrated ownership, established commercial relationships and unequal access to the institutions through which wealth could be accumulated. Political independence was a historic achievement. Economic democratization was, and remains, a different undertaking.
THE RULING CLASS DOES NOT NEED TO BE WHITE
One of the more uncomfortable realities of postcolonial societies is that the racial composition of the people occupying positions of economic influence can change without the underlying structure of privilege changing very much at all. A ruling class does not have to remain white to reproduce the behaviour of a ruling class established under colonial conditions. It can be drawn from different ethnic backgrounds, political traditions and commercial communities. What matters is not simply who occupies the top floor, but how access to the building is controlled.
Belize has experienced the growth of commercial enterprises established by families of different origins. Bowen & Bowen, for example, traces its business history to the establishment of a general trading company by Eric W. M. Bowen and his brother in 1932. Its subsequent development into a diversified group illustrates the importance of entrepreneurship, reinvestment, commercial partnerships and the accumulation of productive assets. Its own corporate history records the expansion into beverage production, brewing, agriculture, energy and other businesses. That history should be acknowledged as part of Belize’s industrial development, not dismissed because a company became successful.
But celebrating established enterprises cannot become an excuse for avoiding questions about the wider market. A country should be able to recognize the contributions of major businesses while examining whether new entrants have a fair opportunity to compete. It should be possible to ask how public contracts are awarded, how incentives are distributed, how commercial licences are administered, how access to finance is determined and whether smaller domestic enterprises can challenge established suppliers. These are legitimate questions of competition policy and economic governance. They are not attacks on a person’s ancestry.
The same standard must apply to every community. Chinese Belizeans, Indian Belizeans, Creole Belizeans, Mestizo Belizeans, Lebanese Belizeans and other communities have all contributed to the country’s commercial life. The success of one community is not evidence of wrongdoing by another. The problem emerges when political connections, inherited capital, institutional familiarity or market concentration create advantages that are difficult for independent entrepreneurs to overcome. A country that wants genuine competition must be prepared to examine those advantages without turning the investigation into an ethnic contest.
The real danger is that Belize may have replaced one narrow conception of who belongs at the centre of economic power with another. The names and backgrounds may differ, but the operating principle remains familiar: those already positioned to benefit from the system are best placed to continue benefiting from it. The aspiring entrepreneur is invited to be industrious, but not necessarily influential; innovative, but not necessarily included; qualified, but not necessarily considered. That is not an economic model designed to maximize national productive capacity. It is a model that risks protecting established positions at the expense of new possibilities.
THE TRACTOR IS USELESS IF THE FARMER CANNOT ACCESS CAPITAL
Productivity is not simply a measure of how hard an individual works. It is a measure of the value produced through the interaction of labour, capital, technology, infrastructure, management, organization and market access. A worker’s output may increase because of better equipment, but the business must first be able to acquire that equipment. The enterprise needs financing, reliable electricity, transportation, storage, skilled personnel, insurance, customers and a regulatory environment that does not make expansion prohibitively difficult. A country can have talented people and still produce a weak economy if the institutions surrounding those people fail to support productive activity.
This is why the language of productivity must not become a convenient way of transferring responsibility from institutions to individuals. Belizeans cannot be told that their wages are low because they are insufficiently productive without examining the conditions under which their labour is organized and rewarded. Workers do not independently determine the technology available to them, the management practices of their employers, the concentration of their industries or the amount of capital invested in their workplaces. They do not set the terms of every contract, control the supply chains or determine whether the domestic market offers enough opportunities for businesses to grow.
The International Labour Organization has identified persistent productivity challenges in Belize, including skills mismatches and structural constraints. That evidence deserves serious attention. But the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean’s 2025 productivity analysis also recorded a 4.7 per cent increase in Belize’s labour productivity per hour worked in 2024, measured using constant 2018 prices. That is an important qualification. Belize is not condemned to permanent stagnation, and the national conversation should recognize measurable improvements while asking how they can be sustained and translated into higher incomes, stronger enterprises and broader economic participation.
Even when productivity increases, wages do not automatically rise in proportion. The distribution of productivity gains depends on bargaining power, competition, ownership, labour institutions, public policy and the allocation of profits. An enterprise can become more productive while keeping wages stagnant, increasing margins or concentrating returns among shareholders. Conversely, an economy can make deliberate choices to improve wages, expand collective bargaining and strengthen social protections. Productivity is essential to sustainable prosperity, but it is not a substitute for examining who receives the benefits of economic growth.
The tractor analogy therefore needs a second illustration. Imagine two farmers. One has access to land, financing, machinery, storage and established buyers. The other has the same ambition and perhaps greater technical ability, but no collateral, no reliable credit and no commercial relationships. Both may be equally willing to work. Their economic outcomes will nevertheless be radically different. If the second farmer fails to expand, it would be intellectually lazy to conclude that the problem is simply a lack of training or ambition. The system has given the two farmers different starting conditions and different opportunities to convert their labour into wealth.
WHEN A BELIZEAN BUILDS THE MACHINERY, WHO INVITES HIM INTO THE ROOM?
This is not an abstract concern for the next generation. It is a question that Belize should be asking about the development of its own technology sector. Consider the case of RAFT Global, a Belizean-founded technology venture developed by Sylvian Hyde. RAFT, which stands for Regional Access & Financial Transformation, has been developing a proposed digital infrastructure architecture intended to support payments, identity, financial inclusion, institutional coordination and other functions associated with national and regional modernization.
The company’s stated ambition extends beyond a conventional payment application. Its published materials describe a modular digital infrastructure concept designed for Caribbean jurisdictions and other developing economies. RAFT says it developed a functional platform and sought opportunities to present its capabilities to Belizean authorities. These are company claims and should be evaluated through technical documentation, independent assessment, regulatory review and demonstrable implementation. But the existence of a domestic technology venture pursuing national-scale infrastructure is itself relevant to a country that says it wants to develop a more sophisticated economy.
The chronology surrounding Belize’s Instant Payments System is particularly revealing. The Central Bank of Belize issued an international request for proposals on August 28, 2025, seeking a provider to design, supply, install and support a national instant payments system. The submission deadline was October 29, 2025. According to RAFT Global’s published account, the company formally presented its platform to the Office of the Prime Minister, the Ministry of Finance and the Central Bank on November 11, 2025, requesting consultation and regulatory sandbox engagement. The Central Bank subsequently announced on March 4, 2026, that Montran Corporation had been selected as the highest-ranked respondent, and publicly announced the execution of its contract on April 21.
The dates matter. RAFT’s November presentation occurred after the October 29 deadline. It would therefore be inaccurate to describe the company as a bidder that submitted a timely proposal and was rejected. Nor does the public record establish that RAFT was technically evaluated as part of the competition. The more pertinent question is what happened after the company presented its claimed domestic capability and requested a pathway for structured engagement. Was there a formal technical consultation? Was the platform assessed against national requirements? Was a regulatory sandbox pathway available? Was there a mechanism through which locally developed technology could be examined for possible integration, interoperability or future use? These questions deserve answers, not assumptions.
The Central Bank’s procurement notice identifies the selection criteria as technical merit, institutional experience in national payment systems and cost-effectiveness. Those are legitimate considerations for a national financial infrastructure project. A payments system must be secure, resilient, interoperable and capable of operating under demanding regulatory and technical requirements. A government should never award a critical national contract merely because a company is locally owned. Domestic participation is not a substitute for technical competence, and patriotism is not a procurement methodology. But neither should international competition become an excuse for failing to develop a transparent mechanism through which domestic technical capability can be identified, evaluated and cultivated.
There is a difference between buying a finished product and building a national industry. When a country purchases a sophisticated system from an external provider, it may obtain the functionality it needs. But if it does not also develop local expertise, create pathways for domestic suppliers, strengthen technical education and establish opportunities for local firms to participate in implementation and maintenance, it risks remaining dependent on external capabilities. A national infrastructure project should be judged not only by whether the system works, but also by what domestic capacity the project helps create.
The question is not whether RAFT should have been awarded the Central Bank contract. There is insufficient public evidence to make that judgment, and the procurement chronology makes a claim of exclusion from the tender inaccurate. The question is whether Belize has a sufficiently mature innovation and procurement ecosystem to recognize domestic capability before, during and after major public projects. If a Belizean entrepreneur has invested years in developing technology relevant to national infrastructure, what is the transparent route through which that work can be presented, tested, evaluated and, where appropriate, incorporated into future development? If no such route exists, the country has a policy problem that cannot be solved by telling entrepreneurs to become more productive.
EDUCATION IS NOT A NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY BY ITSELF
Dr. Zabaneh is right to identify education reform as part of the productivity challenge. Belize cannot build a sophisticated economy without improving literacy, numeracy, technical competence, digital skills, scientific understanding and the ability to solve problems. Curriculum overload, inadequate infrastructure and the quality of classroom instruction are serious matters. Competency-based education and STEAM initiatives may help equip students with the skills needed for a changing economy. School feeding and a healthy learning environment are also relevant because children cannot be expected to perform at their best when basic needs are unmet.
But education reform must be connected to an economic strategy. Belize can train a generation of software developers, engineers, designers, technicians, scientists and financial professionals. If the domestic economy cannot provide meaningful employment, financing, research opportunities, commercial partnerships and pathways to build enterprises, those graduates will look elsewhere. The country will have financed the development of human capital only to export much of its value to economies better positioned to employ it. Brain drain is not simply a cultural problem or a failure of patriotism. It is often a rational response to the difference between the opportunities available at home and those available abroad.
The question must therefore extend beyond what students learn to what the economy allows them to do with that knowledge. Can a Belizean engineer establish a manufacturing company? Can a software developer build a platform and secure a government or private-sector contract through a transparent process? Can a designer protect intellectual property and develop a global business? Can an agricultural entrepreneur obtain affordable financing to modernize production? Can a young professional acquire land, equipment and working capital without needing to belong to an established commercial network? These are not peripheral questions. They are the practical conditions through which education becomes economic development.
A country that teaches entrepreneurship but does not sufficiently support enterprise is teaching an incomplete lesson. It is encouraging people to become independent while leaving them to navigate institutions that may not be designed to facilitate their independence. The result is a peculiar national contradiction: we celebrate the entrepreneur at public events, applaud innovation in speeches, invite investment conferences and announce development strategies, but the practical pathways from an idea to a viable domestic enterprise can remain fragmented and difficult to navigate.
THE HYDE FAMILY, THE BEEF INDUSTRY AND THE MEMORY OF WHO BUILT WHAT
The question of ownership is not confined to technology. It is also visible in the history of Belizean agriculture, livestock and manufacturing. The Hyde family’s involvement in cattle, ranching, meat processing and the handling of hides forms part of a longer history of commercial activity in Belize. Family members worked within the livestock economy, supported ranching and herding operations, and participated in the trade of raw hides. The work of preserving and preparing hides was not an abstract historical detail. It involved practical knowledge of materials, preservation and the early stages of a value chain that could extend into leather production and manufacturing.
That history informs a broader question about Belize’s development ambitions. When government announces plans to expand domestic beef processing, attract investment and move further up the agricultural value chain, who is included in the future being designed? The objective should not be to reserve new industries for families who participated in earlier generations of commercial activity. Nor should historical contribution become a claim to automatic entitlement to contracts, concessions or public resources. But neither should development proceed as though the country’s productive history began the morning a new investor arrived with a proposal.
A mature development strategy would identify existing producers, processors, technical workers, small businesses and families with relevant experience. It would assess how they could participate in the modern value chain through procurement, training, joint ventures, financing, processing, logistics and manufacturing. It would recognize that economic development is cumulative. The knowledge, relationships, infrastructure and experience developed by earlier generations can become foundations for new industries if public policy is designed to connect them to future investment.
The same principle applies to the growth of Belize’s major commercial enterprises. The country should acknowledge businesses that have invested, expanded production, employed people and built recognizable national brands. But it should also examine whether the next generation of entrepreneurs has comparable access to the opportunities that allow those businesses to emerge. The purpose of competition policy is not to punish success. It is to ensure that success does not become a permanent barrier to the emergence of competitors.
THE COST OF A COUNTRY THAT DOES NOT RECOGNIZE ITS OWN CAPACITY
The personal dimension of this discussion is difficult to separate from the national one. Sylvian Hyde’s mother, Kaila Nunes, built an entrepreneurial enterprise and was recognized as Entrepreneur of the Year under a previous UDP administration. The family maintains that the recognition and an associated concession have not been adequately honoured or resolved. That account requires examination of the original award, the terms of the concession, the responsible agencies and subsequent correspondence before any definitive conclusion can be drawn. Nevertheless, it raises an important question about the credibility of government recognition when public commitments to entrepreneurs are not transparently fulfilled.
The same entrepreneur has described his own experience developing RAFT Global and attempting to engage national authorities around Belize’s digital infrastructure. His position is not that a relationship with a political leader should guarantee a contract. It is that an entrepreneur who has developed relevant technical capability should be able to access a credible process through which that capability can be considered. That is a reasonable distinction. Political familiarity should never replace procurement rules, but procurement rules should not become an excuse for institutional indifference to domestic innovation.
There is a wider economic cost when entrepreneurs conclude that the most reliable route to growth is to leave the country, seek foreign partnerships or build elsewhere. Belize loses more than the immediate revenue of a business that might have expanded. It loses potential employment, supplier relationships, tax contributions, intellectual property, technical expertise and the experience that future entrepreneurs could have inherited. The loss compounds over time. One company that never expands may mean several businesses that never become its suppliers, a group of workers who never receive specialized training and a market that never develops the capacity to support another generation of enterprises.
This is why the treatment of local entrepreneurs should be considered a matter of national productivity. It is not enough to measure how much a worker produces in an hour. A country must also ask how many productive enterprises it allows to emerge, how effectively its institutions mobilize local knowledge, how much domestic value is retained and how many people can progress from employment into ownership. Productivity is not only what happens on the factory floor or in the classroom. It is also what happens in the bank, the procurement office, the licensing department, the investment agency and the corridors where public decisions are made.
THE GOVERNMENT CANNOT HAVE IT BOTH WAYS
Belize’s political leadership cannot reasonably demand a more productive population while treating the development of independent economic power as an afterthought. It cannot encourage young people to become innovators and then fail to create credible pathways through which innovation can be evaluated. It cannot speak about retaining skilled professionals while neglecting the conditions necessary for those professionals to build businesses and careers at home. And it cannot celebrate private-sector growth while refusing to examine the rules, incentives and institutional relationships that determine who gets to participate in that growth.
This is not an argument against foreign investment. Belize needs capital, technology, expertise, export markets and strategic partnerships. International companies can help modernize industries, create employment and introduce capabilities that would otherwise take years to develop. But foreign investment should complement domestic enterprise, not become a substitute for it. The strongest development model is one in which external investment helps local firms become more capable, local workers acquire advanced skills, domestic suppliers enter new markets and the country gradually retains more of the value generated within its own economy.
Nor is this an argument that every local business deserves a government contract. Public money must be spent responsibly. National infrastructure must meet demanding standards. Technical capability must be independently assessed. Conflicts of interest must be controlled, and competitive processes must be respected. The point is that fairness requires more than announcing that a tender was international. It requires clear specifications, transparent evaluation, meaningful opportunities for capable suppliers, accessible information, predictable procedures and a credible route for challenging decisions. A procurement system can comply with its formal rules and still leave important questions about national development unanswered.
The government should therefore be prepared to publish and explain how its major procurement programmes contribute to domestic capacity. It should identify opportunities for local subcontracting, knowledge transfer, training, maintenance and technical partnerships where these are commercially and operationally appropriate. It should develop transparent mechanisms for pre-procurement market engagement so that domestic innovators can present technologies before major projects reach the tender stage. It should strengthen access to finance for productive businesses, review the effectiveness of concessions and incentives, and measure whether public investment is creating a wider base of competitive Belizean enterprises.
Above all, it should stop treating entrepreneurship as a motivational slogan. Entrepreneurs do not build businesses through enthusiasm alone. They require capital, customers, infrastructure, institutions, reliable rules and the ability to plan beyond the next political cycle. If Belize wants more productive workers, it must also create more productive employers. If it wants more innovation, it must create an economy that can recognize and absorb innovation. If it wants people to stay, it must give them compelling reasons to build their futures at home.
WHO OWNS THE TRACTOR?
The machete-to-tractor analogy is useful, but it is not a complete development strategy. The tractor can increase output, but it cannot determine whether the farmer owns the land, whether the bank will finance the equipment, whether the market is accessible or whether the profits will be distributed fairly. Those questions belong to the institutions, policies and economic relationships surrounding the machine. They are not solved by training the worker to operate it.
Belize’s productivity challenge is therefore also a question of economic power. The country must examine the historical concentration of land and capital, the evolution of commercial ownership after independence, the accessibility of finance, the transparency of public procurement, the distribution of incentives and the opportunities available to emerging enterprises. It must examine whether its institutions are building a competitive economy or merely managing the advantages of those already established. And it must be willing to investigate uncomfortable questions without reducing the discussion to ethnicity, political loyalty or personal grievance.
The people of Belize do not need another lecture about working harder. They need an economy in which their work can produce greater value, their skills can be rewarded, their ideas can become viable businesses and their children can imagine a future that does not require permanent departure. They need institutions that recognize competence, markets that permit competition and public policies that treat domestic productive capacity as a national asset rather than an inconvenient visitor to the development process.
A country cannot manufacture prosperity by asking its people to become more efficient while ignoring the architecture of opportunity. It cannot preach entrepreneurship while leaving entrepreneurs to fight for access to the very institutions that are supposed to facilitate economic development. And it cannot expect a new generation to build industries if the established order is more comfortable purchasing finished solutions than cultivating the people capable of creating them.
So, by all means, let us get the tractors. Let us modernize agriculture, reform education, invest in technology, improve infrastructure and raise the value of every hour worked. But let us also ask who owns the equipment, who controls the financing, who gets the contracts and who decides which Belizeans are allowed into the room when the future is being designed. Because the real measure of national development is not simply how much more efficiently Belizeans can work. It is how many Belizeans are finally permitted to own, build, compete and prosper.
Comments