BY NED GAGAHE
Ministry of Culture and Tourism (MCT) says it will expand its work on identifying tourism potential sites to other provinces throughout Solomon Islands.
Minister of Culture and Tourism Bartholomew Parapolo revealed this following the success of the site identification carried out by MCT to facilitate tourism investment in the country.
Parapolo told Parliament earlier this week that investment in the tourism sector needs to be supported and accelerated in order to meet our targets of increasing the volume and quality of rooms inventory in the country
“Mr Speaker, another milestone achievement I would like to highlight here is the ministry’s program on facilitating tourism investment in the country.
“Sir, over the last three years my ministry was working to identify registered land that would be suitable for tourism development and appalling to the tourism investors in the Western Province with the support of International Finance Corporation (IFC).
“Sir, I am pleased to report that the end of the survey we have developed a portfolio of investment ready registered land in the Western Province that our investment team can now promote to potential investors.
“Sir, based on the success of the work done in the Western Province investable sites identification and selection my ministry will continue with the same project to include other provinces.
“We will do these under project called Accessing Land for Tourism Investment Facilitation (ALTIF) which is funded under Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC).
“My ministry will continue to identify registered land parcels that have high potentials to attract outside tourism investments to Solomon Islands and to support process by which an investor obtain access to that land via a long-term lease.”
