Fort George Night Festival Brings Life to the Constituency

Over the weekend, the Fort George Constituency came to life with live music and laughter from people who attended the Fort George Night Festival. The event was held in partnership with the Belize City Council and Fort George Area Representative, Henry Charles Usher, and included a number of activities. However, the main attractions, according to Usher, were the numerous locally-made products there were on display. Usher says while the focus was for residents to have a safe enjoyable event, such events help to stimulate the local economy. 

Henry Charles Usher, Area Representative, Fort George: “Micro, small and medium sized enterprises are the engine of this country and we have to give them more support. We have to be able to support them in other areas possible that’s why I’m very proud that we’ve been able to amend the legislation to give more support to MSMEs. You were there for the medium term strategic development launch back in January and you saw the push the thrust for MSMEs to make sure that they can become a part of the formal system in terms of being able to benefit from whatever fiscal incentives that are out there and so on being able to give them the training necessary to build their business and to hire more people. You know there are over 10,000 MSME’s in this country and if we can create an environment where each of those MSME hires one more person then we create 10,000 jobs overnight and that’s what I’m talking about. Creating jobs, getting these MSME’s working, bringing them in so that they can continue to be the formal engine of this economy and I think it’s critical. Over the weekend you partnered with the Belize City Council for our Mother’s Day event. Actually we had a small Fort George Mother’s Day event first and then there was the night market that happened to be in our area and I was out there, I was visiting some of the booths, asking them and wanted to make sure that they were making some sales, getting some sales and that they felt that it was a productive outing for them and for the most part you know all of them said yes that they were very appreciative of the effort to be able to be out there to sell their product and they have some very good products. I was surprised by the type of products being offered out there it’s very quality work coming from our Belizean craftsmen and craftswomen and so I’m very proud to say that we support MSMEs in Fort George and we will continue to do so.”