Central America Requests Money to Bankroll Tourism Projects

Central American nations have turned to donors and financial institutions to get the cash they need for the execution of tourism development plans that could eventually help the region reap gains and create more jobs.

“We want to implement tourism projects at a regional level, so we believe it’s important to keep individual donors that contribute money for Central American countries posted on the regional integration process and its projects,” Salvadoran Tourism Minister Luis Cardenal said.

The announcement was made last week during a meeting in San Salvador in which Central American Tourism Ministers and delegates of international financial institutions and European cooperation agencies huddled to tackle the current challenges of the Central America Integration System (SICA is the Spanish acronym).

Even though Central American nations didn’t reveal an exact figure, they did put their cooperation needs on the table, chiefly in terms of aid to small hotels, personnel training and the fostering of sustainable development in rural areas.

In addition, the participating countries recognized the advantages that a common travel destination offer can bring for the entire region and vowed to continue hammering out joint strategies in that respect.

Representatives from the Central American Economic Integration Bank, the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and cooperation agencies from Spain, Germany, Denmark and the European Commission attended the powwow.

Back in 2003, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama tallied 5.3 million tourists and raked in way over $3.6 billion in revenues.