Cape Verde foreign investment boom
Cape Verde has been in the press over the last few weeks due to its up and coming status on the world stage.
The Island of San Vicente in Cape Verde signed an agreement with Spain’s Canary islands and the Portuguese archipelago of Madeira to promote and operate cruises in the mid-Atlantic.
The agreement will help forge better relations with the countries and includes an exchange of information about events, carrying out competitiveness studies, statistical information management and adopting common security measures.
The benefits of welcoming cruise line tourism are tremendous with high net worth individuals visiting the islands. It will help boost the local economy and will provide more jobs for the islanders. The port infrastructure will also be improved due to this agreement and will have a knock on effect for the local area.
The property boom in Cape Verde is already well underway, bringing tourists and investors to Cape Verde from all over the world. Many flights are fully booked and it is difficult to get there at present, as flights are not frequent from Europe and in particular the UK. However TACV Cabo Verde Airline is due to begin operating a weekly direct flight from Birmingham UK to Praia from November 2006. Once the market becomes more mature more flights per week will be established and the possibly to other airports in the UK. This should all help boost tourist visitor numbers to the Cape Verde Islands.
In other news
Two investment projects were signed in the UK during the BMW Championship at Wentworth, between Cape Verde authorities, a Cape Verde developer, company owned by Ernie Els and the PGA Golf Management.
The overall projects include two large tourist resorts; the first is the Murdeira Beach development on Sal Island and Baía das Gatas on Sao Vicente Island.
The projects will include four golf courses and could create up to 5,000 new jobs.
This type of foreign investment coupled with a new emerging property market should help Cape Verde burst onto the tourism map, lets just hope they don’t overbuild and spoil this idyllic spot off the west coast of Africa.
Source: Macauhub
