Belize's trade deficit is huge but is not the whole story

Belize is importing far more goods than it exports. But Central Bank data show that the country's powerful services surplus, driven heavily by tourism, offsets most of its merchandise deficit.

Belize's merchandise trade numbers are moving in the wrong direction.

During the first eight months of 2026, the country imported BZ$2.207 billion in goods, up 15.8% from BZ$1.906 billion during the same period last year. At the same time, domestic merchandise exports fell 14% to BZ$272.8 million, according to figures released by the Statistical Institute of Belize (SIB) on September 30.

That is an uncomfortable combination: Belize is spending substantially more on imported goods while earning less from the goods it produces and sells abroad.

But it is not the whole story.

The reason is simple. Belize does not earn foreign exchange only by exporting sugar, bananas, marine products and other physical goods. It also exports services.

And services are where Belize's external economy looks remarkably different.

WHAT SIB MEASURES

SIB's latest report deals specifically with merchandise trade, goods crossing Belize's borders. SIB itself describes merchandise trade as the relationship between Belize and other economies "in terms of goods imported and exported".

On that measure, the deterioration is unmistakable.

The BZ$2.207 billion import bill recorded between January and August was BZ$301.5 million higher than during the corresponding period of 2025.

Fuel accounted for a sizeable part of the increase. Imports of mineral fuels and lubricants jumped from BZ$265.1 million to BZ$396.3 million, an increase of BZ$131.2 million. Machinery and transport equipment increased by another BZ$87.8 million, reaching BZ$540.4million.

Exports, meanwhile, weakened.

Sugar earnings fell by BZ$29.5 million during the first eight months of the year, from BZ$94.6 million to BZ$65.1 million. Citrus earnings dropped from BZ$24.1 million to BZ$9.9 million.

There were bright spots. Cattle earnings increased to BZ$49.2 million, bananas edged up to BZ$61.8 million and marine products reached BZ$29.5 million. But those gains were insufficient to compensate for the broader decline.

The merchandise problem, therefore, is real.

THEN COMES TOURISM

The Central Bank of Belize (CBB), however, produces another set of statistics: the Balance of Payments, or BoP.

The distinction is important.

The Central Bank defines the BoP as the statistical statement summarising transactions between Belizean residents and non-residents. Crucially, it contains a goods and services account, rather than goods alone.

The Bank's detailed 2025 BoP statistics demonstrate just how much that distinction matters for Belize.

In 2025, Belize recorded BZ$885.4 million in exports of goods on the BoP basis, compared with BZ$2.7661 billion in goods imports.

That produced a massive BZ$1.8803 billion deficit in goods.

Stop there and Belize appears to have an extraordinary external imbalance.

But the next lines of the same Central Bank table tell a different story.

Belize recorded BZ$2.4282 billion in exports of services during 2025. Imports of services amounted to only BZ$703.2 million.

The result was a BZ$1.725 billion surplus in services.Put the two together and something striking happens.

The BZ$1.725 billion services surplus offset about 92% of Belize's BZ$1.8803 billion goods deficit.

The combined balance on goods and services was not a deficit approaching BZ$2 billion.

It was BZ$155.3 million.

That is still a deficit. But economically it describes a very different external position.

HOW CAN A HOTEL ROOM BE AN EXPORT?

The apparent contradiction disappears once tourism is understood as international trade.

Suppose Belize exports BZ$1,000 worth of sugar. The sugar leaves Belize and a foreign buyer sends money back. Belize has exported a good and earned foreign exchange.

Now suppose an American tourist comes to San Pedro and spends BZ$1,000 on accommodation, meals, tours and local transportation.

Nothing resembling a conventional export has left the country. In fact, the customer came here.

Economically, however, Belize has again sold BZ$1,000 worth of locally produced output to a foreign resident and received foreign currency in exchange.

The first transaction is an export of goods. The second is an export of services.

For an economy as dependent on tourism as Belize, excluding the second transaction from any discussion of the country's broader trade position leaves out one of its largest sources of export earnings.

The CBB numbers make its importance obvious.

Of the BZ$2.4282 billion in service credits recorded during 2025, travel accounted for BZ$1.6547 billion, or roughly 68%.

Transportation generated another BZ$119.2 million, while other goods and services accounted for BZ$551.8 million and government goods and services BZ$102.6 million.

Tourism, therefore, is not merely an important domestic industry. From the perspective of Belize's external accounts, it is an export industry.

WHY THE TWO DATASETS SHOULD NOT SIMPLY BE MIXED

There is an important statistical caution.

The SIB merchandise figures and CBB's Balance of Payments figures should not be treated as interchangeable datasets.

SIB's September release reports gross merchandise imports and domestic merchandise exports. For January-August 2026, those figures were BZ$2.207 billion and BZ$272.8 million respectively.

The difference between them is approximately BZ$1.934 billion.

But that number is most precisely described as the gap between the gross imports and domestic exports reported in SIB's release, rather than transplanting it into the Central Bank's BoP framework as Belize's overall trade deficit.

The CBB's BoP is constructed for a different statistical purpose and provides an internally consistent accounting of Belize's transactions in goods and services.

This is why the 2025 Central Bank figures are particularly useful.

Within the same framework, they allow goods and services to be compared with one another: a BZ$1.8803 billion goods deficit, a BZ$1.725 billion services surplus, and consequently a BZ$155.3 million deficit on goods and services.

There is no need to mix the SIB and CBB figures to make the point.

A DEFICIT WORTH WORRYING ABOUT

None of this makes the merchandise imbalance benign.

Quite the opposite.

Belize's services sector currently performs much of the heavy lifting required to finance the country's appetite for imported goods. The larger the goods deficit becomes, the larger the foreign-exchange earnings required elsewhere in the economy to offset it.

And the latest SIB figures show that pressure increasing.

Compared with the first eight months of 2025, Belize spent an additional BZ$301.5 million on merchandise imports while earning BZ$44.6 million less from domestic merchandise exports.

That is the part of the latest trade report that policymakers should find troubling.

A country cannot assume indefinitely that rapidly expanding imports will always be matched by tourism receipts. Tourism is exposed to external shocks, from recessions in major source markets to hurricanes and disruptions to international travel, as was seen during the pandemic.

Nor does a services surplus eliminate the economic implications of weak merchandise exports. Belize still benefits from producing more goods competitively, diversifying its export base and reducing unnecessary dependence on imports.

But those are different propositions from saying that a merchandise deficit by itself represents Belize's entire trade position.

It does not.

The most accurate description is simultaneously more worrying and more reassuring.

Belize has a large and widening imbalance in its trade in physical goods. But it also has a formidable export industry that does not travel in containers.

In 2025, that services economy generated a surplus large enough to erase roughly 92 cents of every dollar of Belize's deficit in goods.

The merchandise deficit is therefore an important warning about the structure of the Belizean economy.

It just isn't the whole balance sheet.