Tourism is the way to go

The tourism and export sectors have registered strong performance in this year’s private sector performance index released last week.There is optimism that the country is on track to achieve the middle income status by 2020.

Monday, October 15, 2012

The tourism and export sectors have registered strong performance in this year’s private sector performance index released last week.There is optimism that the country is on track to achieve the middle income status by 2020.Tourism is one of the fastest growing sectors globally. Tourism receipts jumped to US$252 million this year, up from US$227 million last year. This is above this year’s projected revenue receipts of US$ 244 million.Exports fetched US$429 million this year, up from US$305 million. There is strong political will to promote tourism in the country.More recently, the launch of cultural tourism, the canopy walk, the Congo Nile Trail in western Rwanda and the national museums is an addition to the tourism products.Rwandans should, therefore, endeavour to preserve all our tourism sites and products since the sector is one of the major drivers of our economy.We should also jealously guard our security and maintain major roads to tourism sites so as to enable tourism to flourish.The Rwanda Development Board tourism chamber should stay committed to efforts geared at tourism promotion and development, as well as mitigation of human and wild life conflict through the revenue sharing scheme.