Belize has been considering making the U.S. dollar their official currency, but this has not been realized yet.  Their government is hesitant to surrender financial control to the U.S. government.  They are also considering the difficulty of earning the money as opposed to just printing their currency bills.  Belize’s official currency is still the Belize dollar, which is pegged at a rate of 1 U.S. dollar to 2 Belize dollar.  The truth is, in Belize, the good currencies are the U.S. dollar, yen and Euro; the rest are just soft currencies which are not good.  It is impossible to exchange a Belize dollar anywhere else, with one or two exceptions.  The law provides for the authorized moneychangers in Belize, which include the Central Bank and the Casas de Cambio.  However, this is not at all observed in Belize, with the U.S. dollars being used for business transactions, paying for good and services.

People have been flaunting the laws on currency regulations in Belize.  These laws include:

1.  Provision requiring people to secure a foreign exchange permit in order to pay for goods and services which were purchased outside the country using foreign currency.

2.  Provision requiring people to secure a permit from the Central Bank in order to secure an offshore loan involving foreign currency and to pay for foreign debt.

3.  Provision requiring investors to register their investments with the Central Bank in order to assist in the repatriation of income and its distribution.

Indeed, it has been practice for people to open offshore bank accounts in countries like Belize, but with Belize in particular, there is a need for you to keep away a large volume of your assets from Belize.  It is relatively good to open an account to have speedier access to your money in order to handle local transactions, but to actually deposit the bulk of your assets in Belize is not wise.  You must maintain your banking accounts in your local country.  You can always just wire funds to your Belize account if the need arises.