The Private Sector Federation (PSF) plans to organise cultural exhibitions aimed at promoting the tourism industry, which is one of the country’s top foreign exchange earners.

The lack of cinema or other premises in which cultural events or exhibitions can be organised, however, hampers the progress of the country’s strategy to diversify tourism.

"We will be innovative in supporting cultural tourism and turn the town (Kigali) into a culturally active town on top of its security and cleanness,” Faustin Mbundu, the PSF Chairman said, adding that the federation is set to organise mini trade fairs at the sector level to support emerging sectors of the economy such as construction, ICT, green energy, agriculture technologies and tourism.

Through such initiative, he said the Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) industry will be able to seize new opportunities to grow faster.

The chairman noted that PSF and the government are working around the clock to ensure that the proposed international trade centre is complete by 2016.

The Institute of National Museums of Rwanda (INMR) recently launched an awareness campaign designed to revitalise cultural tourism and promote the country’s heritage.

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of PSF, Rogers Munyampenda, said that: "Our vision for exhibition is actually more holistic. A survey will be conducted during the expo to enable us start rolling out sector trade fairs in the near future.”

Meanwhile, this year’s Rwanda International Trade Fair which ends on August 10, 2011 has attracted healthy competition with foreign exhibitors reducing prices of goods.

Nice house of plastics from Uganda slashed prices on its products that saw its ballpens and plastic basins stocks run out. Wisporo Uganda Ltd followed suit with their latest white rose cocoa and sheer butter, girl-friend creams attracting more women customers while Mukwano Industries’ products created an option for customers to remain with a balance in their purses.

Many local companies ranging from telecom companies, agro processing, ICT and manufacturing provided customers with a real image of their products and services.

 Banks, too, are giving full services to their clients.

However, failure to allocate the exhibitors according to sectors has seen many people fail to visit all the stalls in a fully crowded expo with the most affected being exhibitors in the construction sector who were competing with jewellery stalls.

Arun A. Pillai, the Marketing Executive of Uganda-based Multiple Industries, which manufactures PVC pipes, said that this year’s expo was unique compared to the previous one but lacked proper arrangement.

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