Caution -- this stuff is pretty detailed; good stuff for someone planning on

moving to Belize. If you're not a glutton for punishment, you might want to

skip to the bottom line!

CUSTOMS AT THE PORT

Since Customs at the border was infuriating, I anticipated that it would be

worse in Belize City. It was.

The port authority is located out at the edge of town -- it almost seems

like the edge of the world. You go to the town center, turn south, and go

until the road runs out. The area is crowded with parked semis and

containers; Wed. morning, when I arrive at about 10, the parking lot around

customs was full and I had to park about 300 yards up the road from the

gate.

Basically, the customs process is:

1. Submit the customs papers -- called "The Entry" -- to Valuation (This was

done by my broker, early in the morning.)

2. Valuation enters the Entry into a computer

3. We -- someone -- locates the shipment in the Port Authority barn

4. Examine the shipment to ensure that it matches the Entry

5. Make any necessary modifications to the entry (manual changes)

6. Re-enter the Entry in another computer (Perhaps they think this is a

verification step)

7. Print the new entry and sight verify the new entry against the old one, &

submitted documentation (receipts, etc.)

8. Pay the duty to the cashier

9. Pay any "excess" -- storage charges for being in the barn for more than

three days.

10. Check off your shipment against the list of all shipments recieved.

(This was actually pretty simple, since the shipments are recorded as they

are received, and your entry has that time on it.) But of course, it's

another queue.

11. Gain access with your vehicle to the Port Authority barn

12 Load your shipment

13. Escape

Everything is excruciatingly manual, with two or three layers of

supervision. My entry was 23 lines, took two hours to enter each time.

Everything is totally sequential. Your entry completes a step and goes on

the end of another queue of entries for the next step. We started searching

for the shipment at 10:30. Broke for lunch at 11:30. Lunch (an "hour")

ended at 2:00.

After a half hour of futile searching, they let me look for the shipment and

we found it in about 10 minutes. (It was addressed to Charlotte's Web, and

not me.) Then we had to get in the queue for the inspector, who was busy

inspecting a shipment of 10,000 shoes to find a pair that she liked. She

inspected my shipment, item by item, and we were done for the day at 5PM.

(Notice that this was only step 4.) I should have resealed the box.

I splurged and spent the night at the Biltmore Hotel -- $95US, but a crucial

location in my upcoming thriller about Belize.

The next morning, I arrived at 8 -- the parking lot was empty. They

reviewed the discrepancies between my entry and the shipment, and decided

not to charge the $10,000BZ they could charge me for a discrepancy. After

two hours of queue time, re-entry took two hours, plus another two hour

lunch.

WAITING: The customs guys walk around, carrying papers back and forth.

(In some cases they waddle around, because many of them are 40 pounds

overweight.) They generally regard us as victims or cattle -- certainly not

as customers. There are a couple of security guys who saunter around with a

gun tucked in their waistband. (I'm sure that when they get home, there's a

big mark on their belly where the gun cut into their skin, and I hesitate to

think what would happen if they tried to make a "fast draw.") One of them

chased me around the cashier area, trying to get me to go outside and wait.

Of course, I had the money to pay the duty, so I needed to be there. <duh!>

So he made me wait "over there" instead of "over here" and that justified

his being armed and dangerous.

After my entry was finally complete, the cashier's printer was down, and we

waited two hours for it to get fixed. (Dozens of computers and printers in

the building, but the cashier has only one, and it's one of a kind.)

There's a queue of people waiting to pay, and my broker had a dozen entries

for them to process, and I had to wait for him to finish that before I could

go over to the Port Authority barn, get a numbered ticket authorizing me to

enter the compound. Of course, I sat and watched while my (Gringo) entry

got bumped by a dozen Belizean entries. Had I been a Rich Gringo, a tip

would have expedited that process, but I didn't know that. The barn closes

at 6; I was loaded at 6:10. (A tip to the loading guys helped.)

Of course, it was dark, and I drove back to Corozal in the dark, in spite of

the fact that Betsy's low beams have stopped working. The next morning I

realized that I was missing a) my dolly b) my speaker stands. (Open box --

unloaded and packed in my truck in the dark.) Both irreplaceable.

BOTTOM LINE

The process is a system analyst's dream -- I could cut the whole operation

down from two days to two hours max with the right system. (The broker has

already typed everything into his system once -- that should do it. ...SIX

COPIES?????)

The duty was $1475BZ, on about $4225BZ of taxable stuff. (The steel guitar

was duty-free.) I got burned for a couple of hundred dollars worth of

irreplaceable items stolen or misplaced during the process.

A broker (waiting along with me) told me that the Customs staff is very

demoralized because of the half-billion dollars which the current GOB has

misplaced. These people are working hard to bring revenue into the country,

and it's disappearing into off-shore bank accounts instead of being used to

run the country.

My take, as an analyst and consultant, is that it cost them two or three

dollars -- maybe five -- to collect a dollar of duty. And they frustrated me

(the customer) with two days of waiting, intimidation and guilty looks.

(They told my broker that I was making them nervous. Indeed! Someone

should make them nervous.)

I could make some recommendations, but you know what I said before about

free advice.

I have my stuff, in my house, in Corozal, and that's another Chronicle!

Senor Reek

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