City Hall to collaborate with Tourism Authority for CDB grant
─ to beautify the city and boost tourism
By Kipenie Jordan
DPI, Guyana, Thursday, May 23, 2019
Director of the Guyana Tourism Authority (GTA), Brian Mullis has invited the Mayor and City Council (M&CC) to work with his organisation to access a Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) grant for the development of green spaces in the city of Georgetown.
The Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) has agreed to provide a grant of $21M for the development of green spaces in the capital city.
At Wednesday’s statutory meeting, Director of Tourism, Brian Mullis expressed the Tourism Authority’s interest in collaborating with the M&CC for the benefit of boosting tourism.
Mullis said, “the Caribbean development bank has a new urban regeneration policy and has expressed an interest in piloting in the city of Georgetown, and they have agreed to provide us with a US$100,000 grant in the form of technical assistance.”
He explained that placemaking is a people-driven approach to planning and managing public spaces, which allows business, real estate owners and community leaders to collectively re-imagine and re-invent public spaces, as the heart of the community. “As we know, nicer places to live, visit and do business, has many benefits and makes use of vacant land, fosters investment, modern infrastructure, while protecting built heritage, that makes places like Georgetown, unique and attractive to visitors, it will help improve the public image of Georgetown.”
He further noted that the best cities in the world have strong brands, and there is a need to strengthen the brand image of Georgetown. The development of the city will allow for further economic growth. Georgetown is the gateway to wider tourism destinations in Guyana, and therefore can capture most of the tourism expenditure for visitors.
Mullis said the approval of the grant by the council would allow for more attraction to the city and that placemaking has been successfully implemented in other destinations among which are Bogota, Colombia, Santiago, Chile, Nairobi, Kenya and New York City, New York.
For the grant to be accessed, there has to be an agreement at the level of the council, then an approach to the Ministry of Communities stating which green spaces are priority for development. The next stage would be to approach the Ministry of Finance, who will then begin talks with the Caribbean Development Bank for access the grant.
After approval, the projects that are earmarked as priority will be budgeted, and the process for developing the green spaces will commence. This project will aid in the beautifying of Georgetown while boosting tourism in the city.
Images: Marceano Narine