Why
invest in Nicaragua now?
The
increase of tourism and foreign investment has also spawned
improvements to Nicaragua’s infrastructure. A new four-lane
highway connecting Granada to Managua, scheduled for completion
in November, will bring the capital a lot closer to the colonial
city by the lake. And a new Pacific coast tourism highway
– known as La Costanera – is scheduled to break
ground in 2006 (with a completion date of 2008), and promises
to have an explosive effect on coastal tourism and real
estate values. In the last three years, the government
has paved, bricked or repaired more than 600 kilometers
of road, averaging almost 17 kilometers a month, mostly
on the Pacific coast. Most of Nicaragua’s interior
is still inaccessible jungle.
INTUR minister Lucía
Salazar, who has a very close working relationship with
President Bolaños, says she expects Nicaraguan
tourism to surpass Costa Rica in the next five years.
Good opportunities exist
for entrepreneurs who are willing to make a long-term investment
in Nicaragua's emerging tourism industry, especially along
the Pacific coast between Managua and Costa Rica. With
the construction of the Pacific coast tourism highway – La
Costanera – Nicaragua will be even closer to northern
Costa Rica’s Guanacaste, and Nicaragua hopes the
development and tourism boom there will carry across the
border.
There are currently a total
of nine major tourism attractions and 20 residential development
projects on the coast, which, in the words of the Ministry
of Transport and Infrastructure’s planification director
Ernesto Téllez: “Make you forget you’re
in Nicaragua.”
The tourism developments
are, from north to south: Masachapa, Pochomil, La Boquita,
Casares, Huehuete, Astillero, Brito, San
Juan del Sur, and Ostional.
Nicaragua’s Pacific coast attracts 646,000 tourists
annually, and the numbers will continue to grow.
“There is enormous
potential in this cluster of tourism,” said Téllez,
who is overseeing the Design and Planning state of the
Costanera. “The new highway will continue to help
development along the coast.”
Real estate agents estimate
that property values on the Pacific coast will increase
by 50% after the tourism highway is finished in 2008. Real
estate values will only continue to grow as more development
goes up on the coast.
There are some 20 development
projects up and down the Pacific coast, with special interest
seeming to be focused on Tola Beach, known as the Nicaraguan
Riviera.
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