Tourism Minister urges greater private sector involvement to drive industry

Tourism Industry and Commerce Minister, Oneidge Walrond on Sunday led a team of senior
tourism officials and stakeholders to Linden, Region 10, on an outreach aimed at fostering
tourism development there.
Walrond met with the Region 10 tourism committee at the Watooka House, where officials
raised several concerns and issues regarding tourism in the region. The Minister told
stakeholders that she would like to see more private sector involvement in tourism. “Every single
region has something to offer and Region 10 has been particularly vibrant in terms of your
tourism offerings, and I would like to see more private sector people involved in the tourism
committee.  This is not to replace but to augment, the eating places, restaurants,’ tour guides,
more of you involved,” she noted. The minister said that this move, will bring more “buy in” and
more coordination from the promotion products. “The development that is contemplated for
Region 10 and indeed for every single region in Guyana, cannot be done by government alone, it
has to be private sector driven, it has to be private sector funded,” she opined.
Walrond said that there are interests from investors in Dubai and Qatar, however there is a
challenge in finding local partners in the sector. “It has been a real disappointment for me, that I
cannot present to the Qataris who come here with billions of US dollars to invest in projects, and
we couldn’t find private sector tourism products that were ready to present as a proposal to these
businessmen, to the people who come here looking for opportunities… we really need to get our
act together, that we are not running a cake shop, with the development that we are talking about
for the region and indeed for the rest of Guyana, we want it to be big, we want it to be
spectacular,” she explained.

Minister Walrond noted that coordination is important and that “there are no consortiums, it has
to be a collective effort.” She added too, that government only supports projects that benefit the
people in the community, continuing that much could be accomplished in the region if a serious
approach is taken. “We had nothing to offer, or very little to offer in terms of actual projects,
proposal that is done,” she said. Walrond reminded the stakeholders to bring ‘big’ proposals. “It
has to be a local partnership. We are not going to have investors come in and they run the project
themselves. We are insisting, as government, that local people have to be partners, so you don’t
have to worry that it’s gonna be taken out of you, so we really have to step up our game in terms
of this business of tourism, and to make it profitable for the people it has to be a bigger vision,”
she declared.
She added, “There is no doubt that Region 10 is beautiful, but need to up the game in terms of
the vision for the region and the types of vision that we have”.