Sergipe, a state in northeastern Brazil, will receive a $60 million loan from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to develop its tourism industry in order to increase employment and household income.
The project, structured as a multiple works loan under the country’s PRODETUR Program, will help the state develop sun-and-sand tourism, ecotourism and cultural tourism along the coastline in Costa dos Coqueiros and Sao Francisco river. It will finance the development, recovery and/or modernization of historical-cultural circuits, museums, interpretation centers, scenic overlooks, and traditional handicraft markets, among others. The project will also support the upgrading of tourism facilities in beaches, as well as support measures to restore, demarcate and protect their dunes and estuaries’ ecosystems.
Besides infrastructure, the project will support capacity building to improve the quality of services provided by companies and environmental and social responsibility among communities and tourism operators. It will also finance the development of a tourism marketing and promotion strategy, studies to expand the state’s main airport, environmental management plan to reduce erosion in the state’s coastline and institutional strengthening activities.
The project is expected to create more than 3,600 new (direct and indirect) jobs in the tourism industry and increase tourist daily spending in the state by 7 percent, tourist length of stay by 6 percent, and the proportion of tourists visiting Sergipe for leisure by 5 percent.
The IDB loan has a 25-year maturity and a 66-month grace period. Local counterpart financing from Sergipe totals $40 million.