Praia, Cape Verde, 26 Jan – Scottish real estate agency FM has mandated consultancy Abacus Savills to seek out investment opportunities in the Cape Verde residential and tourist sector, and is already negotiating the acquisition of three developments on Boavista Island, Abacus Savills said Thursday.

According to a statement from Abacus Savills, the Scottish group, which its home market mainly deals with the residential sector, has chosen Cape Verde as it first foreign investment.

According to the same source the Boavista projects are already in “advanced” negotiations.

For Abacus’ residential director, Paulo Vassalo, “the cape Verde market has the conditions to grow strongly this decade, and represents a real opportunity for internationalization, due to its characteristics.”

Cape Verde was recently ranked by British television station Channel 4, as the 12th best place to buy a holiday home, ahead of the Italian province of Tuscany, among 20 other destinations, almost all of which were in Europe.

In the first half of 2005, Cape Verde received 92,000 tourists, specifically from Italy, Portugal and Germany, 8.6 percent more than in the same period of the previous year, according to the archipelago’s statistics institute. (macauhub)