Jamaica favoured by hotel financiers
Published:Sunday | May 9, 2010 | 12:00 AM
Janet Silvera, Senior Gleaner Writer
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico:
International financiers see Jamaica as a top destination for hotel developments and are willing to back investors rolling out projects here, a new KPMG survey has found.
The institutions surveyed have a total exposure to the industry in the region of over US$2.58 billion and are physically represented throughout all major English and Spanish-speaking countries, the Dutch Caribbean and Central America, the auditing and research company said.
The findings of the KPMG 'Caribbean Region Financing Survey', released Wednesday at the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Investment Conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico, placed Jamaica in the top three most-favoured investment destinations, according to KPMG partner Simon Townend.
The other countries ranked in the top tier were The Bahamas, Barbados, Bermuda, St Lucia, the Dominican Republic, The Cayman Islands, and Mexico's southeast.
"Jamaica is clearly an attractive destination with a very good product, which is diverse and culturally rich," said Townend.
Jamaica has in its favour, he said, its reputation as a long-established and well-understood tourism destination in the Caribbean, but also its infrastructure and modern communication networks.
But even while he spoke about the positive assets, the KPMG partner pointed to the setbacks that the country faced, causing it not to be way ahead of competitors.
"The social disorders, such as crime, are a setback," he said, in addition to the country's economic volatility in terms of its debt, and the constant depreciation of the Jamaican currency, which makes it more expensive to do business.
Tourism's worth recognised
The Inter-American Development Bank's (IDB) investment officer for Jamaica and The Bahamas, Stefan Wright, said that his organisation recognised tourism's worth, and in the last year, had increased its private-sector thrust in Jamaica, introducing a corporate finance division a year ago to deal with this aspect of the market.
"We are looking to expand our presence and loans in Jamaica," he said, adding that tourism was one of the focus areas because it was important to the economy.
Wright said the IDB's strong preference was to work with hotels that were developing sustainable resorts. "We stay away from mix-use developments," he admitted, noting that IDB favoured financing resorts that provide real economic opportunities for surrounding communities.
Already, he said, there were seven proposals from the tourism industry that he was currently looking over.
Currently, the 48-member IDB raises money from the capital markets to help fund these developments.
The bank last year disbursed US$11.9 billion in loans among its 26 borrowing member countries, nine of which are in the Caribbean.