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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Date: 7/22/2008