Belize’s Foreign Affairs Minister Wilfred Elrington welcomed attendees of the Presidents Week Asset Protection and Global Investment Forum to Ambergris Caye yesterday evening. The annual event is sponsored by Hemispheres Publishing, Inc. The conference, now in its 13th year, brings international investors from around the world to Ambergris Caye for four days of presentations on international business, finance and investment. Michael Cobb, Chairman and CEO of Exotic Caye International spoke with Love News.
Michael Cobb - CEO of Exotic Caye International
“It’s called the Belize Advantage conference. We promote to about 35,000 North Americans, US, Canadians for the most part who then attend one of our three or four conferences a year. These conferences really emphasise what the title is, the Belize advantage; why someone in North America might want to come down, why they would want to live here, invest here, bank here or retire here. Belize has so many advantages that it’s much easier to bring everyone here and put a bunch of speakers and presenters in the room so they can ask the questions that they want to ask and get the information they want to get. Belize is unique in a lot of ways, in fact it is funny, I was giving some people a tour, it is their first time in Belize today, they are from England and they are here at the conference and I was giving them a tour up and down the island and they asked what are some of the things about Belize that we discuss. In terms of things like trust law and finance law you know Belize because it came kind of late to the party, in the 80s and early 90s Belize was able to go out and look at the best of these other jurisdictions in term of trust law and banking law and say this has been working really well for this country, Cayman Islands and Turks and Caicos, this didn’t work so well over here so let’s take what worked here, let’s take what works here, let’s put it together in one package. The trust law is some of the best in the world for asset protection and one of the largest groups that we bring in are physicians because physicians need asset protection, they get sued a lot in the United States and Canada and so they really like asset protection laws in Belize. The other thing that Belize really offers is the retirement program the QRP, Qualified Retired Persons Program, it is a phenomenal program for North Americans looking to retire outside the United States, the beautiful Caribbean island or the mainland, in the mountains. That’s the thing I don’t think lot people don’t understand, the real incredible diversity of what Belize has to offer in terms of geography. Again, Caribbean island, mountains, jungle, it really is a very rich country in a small package.”
The conference is dubbed “Presidents Week” because it was founded as a small gathering of corporate presidents who wanted to exchange insights on the world economy, demographic and market trends, and new investment opportunities. In his introduction Minister Elrington offered his gratitude to the forum for their consideration of Belize as a recipient for their investments, while pointing out the various aspects of Belize that makes it ideal for investing and retiring. The conference ends on Saturday.
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