$24M carbon credit grant: Annai Central to expand tourism, agriculture products

The community of Annai Central, located in North Rupununi, Region Nine (Upper Takutu-Upper Essequibo) aims to boost its tourism products as well as expand agriculture using its $24 million carbon credit grant.
Speaking with this publication on Thursday, Toshao of Annai Central, Michael Williams shared that a large sum of the grant will be used to build two cabins and conduct handicraft training to develop the village’s tourism product. He unveiled too that the village has already purchased a bus as well as some other equipment with the first tranche of the grant which was $14.9 million.
“So far, we’ve bought three boats, a minibus, two outboard engines, a generator, a freezer, [and] a chainsaw. We still have…$6+ million which will be spent on building tourism cabins. We’ll start that project by Monday [and we] want to finish the cabins before September,” he noted.
“We have a big budget for tourism, we’re building cabins and so on, and then after that, we have handicraft training…which should last about six or eight months. On the next tranche, we’re thinking about…multiple crop farming, handicraft training, and a few others. We want to continue with cassava, banana, plantain, potatoes, pine, and peas, that’s what we will target as soon as we get the second tranche,” Williams explained.
Moses also unveiled that through the supplementary funds from this year’s national budget, the village requested a minibus to transport children to school.
“We’re supposed to get a 19-seater minibus for our Annai Secondary School students because we have over seventy children going from Annai Central to Annai Secondary School.”
All projects are being executed by villagers. Williams noted that they are receiving assistance from Visit Rupununi to develop the tourism aspect of their economic plans. Currently, the only tourism product the village offers is handicraft.
Annai Central village is an Indigenous community located in the heart of the North Rupununi. Annai derives from a Carib word that means pineapple. Annai Central lies approximately 72 miles (or 115 Km) north of the township of Lethem, the regional administrative capital of the Rupununi.
The village, which is home to a Government compound, has a population of approximately 738 persons occupying 146 households.

$4.7B distribution
In February this year, a total of 241 Amerindian communities across the country each received grants ranging from $10M to $35 million. This initiative followed the historic agreement signed with Hess Corporation for Guyana’s carbon credits in 2022, which will see the country earning US$750 million for its forest. A total of $4.7 billion (US$22.5 million), which represents 15 per cent of Hess’s payment for Guyana’s carbon credits, was disbursed in the various communities.
Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo has explained that a strict mechanism would be followed to ensure accountability and transparency regarding how the funds would be expended. Each community is required to create a separate bank account so the spending of the funds could be properly monitored. Moreover, the community cannot utilise the funds until a Finance Committee is named and the Village Development Plan is completed and endorsed by the village.
Jagdeo had expressed that the plans should be focused on either empowerment projects in the social sector, job creation, and/or on food security efforts.