Man­ni­ram Prashad, Min­is­ter of Tourism, In­dus­try and Com­merce, said Guyana is open for busi­ness with a very at­trac­tive in­vest­ment cli­mate. He was mak­ing a pre­sen­ta­tion on tourism op­por­tu­ni­ties in Guyana at the Third Chi­na-Caribbean Eco­nom­ic and Trade Co-op­er­a­tion Fo­rum, which was held ear­li­er this month at the Hy­att Re­gency Trinidad, Port-of-Spain. Prashad said Guyana, the Ama­zon Ad­ven­ture and the gate­way to the Ama­zon, has much to of­fer from its pris­tine trop­i­cal and Ama­zon­ian rain­for­est; amaz­ing wildlife; more than 860 species of birds; nine in­dige­nous tribes with their low car­bon lifestyle; a rich and di­verse cul­tur­al her­itage, along with friend­ly and wel­com­ing peo­ple.

He said Guyana has adopt­ed a low car­bon de­vel­op­ment strat­e­gy and is there­fore com­mit­ted to sus­tain­able tourism de­vel­op­ment. Min­is­ter Prashad said ad­di­tion­al­ly, Guyana is a safe haven, free from the dev­as­tat­ing hur­ri­canes and oth­er nat­ur­al dis­as­ters. Guyana has re­cent­ly won the Caribbean Sus­tain­able Tourism Award joint­ly with Har­ri­son's Cave of Bar­ba­dos and will be host­ing the Caribbean Tourism Or­gan­i­sa­tion (CTO) 13th An­nu­al Sus­tain­able Tourism Con­fer­ence (STC-13) next April. Prashad said Guyana is shap­ing up to be­come the new "eco-tourism hotspot," and ar­rivals have been steadi­ly in­creas­ing. He said sev­er­al ma­jor in­fra­struc­tur­al de­vel­op­ments have been com­plet­ed, lay­ing the foun­da­tion for an ex­pan­sion in tourism.

He not­ed that Guyana has re­ceived the Ap­proved Des­ti­na­tion Sta­tus (ADS) from Chi­na and is work­ing to tap in­to this huge out­bound Chi­nese mar­ket, which is pre­dict­ed to grow to 100 mil­lion by 2015. He said Guyana's diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions with Chi­na, in­clud­ing in­vest­ment, con­tin­ues to be strength­ened and ex­pand­ed, point­ing to the Skel­don Sug­ar Fac­to­ry and the Guyana In­ter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence Cen­ter, which are lega­cies of Guyana Chi­na De­vel­op­ment Co­op­er­a­tion and, in­deed, a win for all." The Tourism, In­dus­try and Com­merce Min­is­ter said Guyana is open for busi­ness and has a dy­nam­ic and ex­pand­ing tourism in­dus­try which con­tin­ues to at­tract for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment in the tourism sec­tor.

He said the coun­try which has record­ed a 6.9% growth in its econ­o­my for the first half of this year, of­fers at­trac­tive tourism de­vel­op­ment in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties and in­cen­tives. And, in an ef­fort to con­tin­ue growth and in­vest­ment in the tourism in­dus­try, the Gov­ern­ment of Guyana through the Guyana Of­fice for In­vest­ment (Go-In­vest) of­fers in­cen­tives and tax ex­emp­tions for tourism in­vest­ment projects, he fur­ther added. He said out­lined nu­mer­ous tourism in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties in Guyana like prop­er­ties and ac­com­mo­da­tion; trans­porta­tion; tour op­er­a­tions; med­ical tourism; recre­ation­al tourism fa­cil­i­ties; niche tourism; films/doc­u­men­taries; culi­nary tourism; and cruis­ing/boat­ing.

"Guyana is open for busi­ness and that we do have a very at­trac­tive in­vest­ment cli­mate," Prashad re­it­er­at­ed. "Guyana can be seen as the strate­gic and ide­al place for in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties . "Take the op­por­tu­ni­ty and be a part of Guyana's de­vel­op­ment, ad­vance­ment and progress by in­vest­ing in tourism "the in­dus­try of the fu­ture for Guyana," he said. He said he is con­fi­dent and op­ti­mistic that the Chi­na Caribbean Eco­nom­ic and Trade Co­op­er­a­tion Fo­rum will help to fur­ther en­hance and boost sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment; cre­ate in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties and joint ven­tures; strength­en the re­la­tion­ship be­tween Chi­na and the Caribbean; and im­prove the re­gion's com­pet­i­tive­ness, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and in­no­v­a­tive­ness.

"I there­fore en­cour­age Caribbean coun­tries and the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to take full ad­van­tage of the op­por­tu­ni­ties that will arise from this his­toric fo­rum," Prashad said. Giv­ing the keynote ad­dress at the sem­i­nar was Shao Qi­wei, chair­man of the Na­tion­al Tourism Ad­min­is­tra­tion of the Peo­ple's Re­pub­lic of Chi­na, who not­ed that with the strong sup­port of the Chi­nese Gov­ern­ment, the tourism in­dus­try in Chi­na is on a fast track of growth. He said in 2010, Chi­na re­ceived 55.66 mil­lion in­bound overnight vis­i­tors and record­ed 57.39 mil­lion out­bound vis­i­ta­tion, con­tribut­ing 6.14 per cent to in­ter­na­tion­al tourist ar­rivals of the year (935 mil­lion in 2010). The Chi­nese out­bound vis­i­tors' ex­pen­di­ture reg­is­tered at US$54.9 bil­lion ac­count­ing for 5.97 per cent of the glob­al vis­i­tors spend­ing (US$920 bil­lion in 2010), he said.

Qi­wei said Chi­na has be­come the 3th largest in­bound tourist des­ti­na­tion; the third largest out­bound tourism con­sumer; and the world's largest do­mes­tic tourism mar­ket is now tak­ing shape in Chi­na.

In re­cent years, he not­ed, ten Caribbean coun­tries were des­ig­nat­ed as ADS coun­tries for Chi­na and there have been even clos­er tourism ex­changes be­tween Chi­na and the re­gion, with ris­ing num­ber of peo­ple trav­el­ling back and forth. He said tourism co­op­er­a­tion be­tween the two sides holds bright prospects and made sev­er­al pro­pos­als in­clud­ing vig­or­ous­ly car­ry­ing out pro­mo­tion­al ac­tiv­i­ties to­wards each oth­er tourism mar­kets; ef­fec­tive­ly ex­pand co­op­er­a­tion be­tween tourism en­ter­pris­es; co­op­er­ate with im­por­tant trans­porta­tion hubs like the Unit­ed States and Cana­da to forge trav­el routes of mul­ti­ple des­ti­na­tions cater­ing to the needs of Chi­nese tourists; and im­prove visa poli­cies.