…Govt providing a third of equity
PRESIDENT Bharrat Jagdeo says the Marriott Hotel project development, which has been in the making for a number of years, should commence by July this year, and government is making a significant investment to make this project a reality. The president was speaking at a presentation he made while meeting members of the Guyana Craft Producers Association at the Guyana International Conference Centre last Thursday.
At the meeting, the president announced a $10M fund for craft producers, funding for the provision of a building to house producers from across the country, and a commitment to work with financial institutions to provide loans with better credit terms.
“They have gone out to tender (for the Marriott). The government is investing a third and an investor that has built another Marriott Hotel is investing two-thirds. Hopefully that will start in July,” he said.
As already reported in this newspaper, last year Marriott International Inc. announced that it would open its first Marriott branded hotel in Guyana in 2013. It will be a 160-room hotel, which will operate under a management agreement with Atlantic Hotel Inc. (AHI), which is currently owned by the Government of Guyana as part of a public-private partnership between the government and private sector investors.
It is believed that the public-private partnership project will transform the hospitality landscape and encourage more travel and tourism development for Guyana. It is said that the project will be more an integrated entertainment complex ideally located at the corner of the Atlantic Ocean and Demerara River, with a casino, nightclub, restaurant and boardwalk.
During the same speech, President Jagdeo said that the Cheddi Jagan International Airport will be expanded to three times its present size when the planned works there are completed. He said when the expansion is complete, the airport will have space enough to accommodate all manner of commercial businesses, as seen at foreign airports.
He said that there are more and more investments, which are changing the landscape, and land value is increasing as a result of these changes. “You see more buildings going up in the city. More and more people are investing,” he said.
Further, the President said that the old Guyana Rice Development Board port would be upgraded and be made into a port for cruise ships.
“Things take time to change, too. We cannot move from under-developed to developed overnight,” he said.
He mentioned the fact that in 15 years, Guyana has been able to pay back US$1.6B or over G$300B in foreign debt. He noted that had that money been used locally, it could have built all the hospitals, fix every road, and fixed every school.