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By Zuwena Shame
Tanzania's tourism policy on hand is good
enough to enable us generate even more
wealth from the sector, Natural Resources
and Tourism Minister Shamsa Mwangunga has
said. The Minister made the remarks early
this week while opening stakeholders meeting
on global value chain analysis in tourism.
"As you may be aware the first national
policy was adopted in 1991, setting overall
objectives and strategies necessary for
ensuring sustainable tourism development in
the country", she said.
Through the policy, she said, people can
claim considerable achievements that have
been made including the establishment of
Tanzania Tourist Board (TTB), improvement of
the private sector participation and
approval of many new tourism related
projects in collaboration with the Tanzania
Investment Centre (TIC).
Mwangunga said the policy document which was
revised in 1999, now focuses on promoting
the economy and livelihoods of people
through sustainable and quality tourism,
sensitive to social-cultural norms and
environment.
Likewise, it aims to "market Tanzania as a
favoured tourist destination for touring and
adventure".
Ultimately, policy would increase
contribution of the sector to the GDP and
increasing the number of tourists to one
million in two year's time.
It is also partly linked to the
comprehensive strategy of improving existing
tourist infrastructure and to develop it
further so as to increase revenue
collections from the sector as per the
intention of the government.
Both globalisation and trade liberalisation
are also fronting lots of challenges on all
sectors of the economy including tourism, as
increased flow of Foreign Direct Investments
(FDIs) in the form of chain hotels and tour
operators keeps on coming.
Yet, she lamented that "lower classes do not
access significant benefits", this being one
of the many challenges brought by massive
flows of FDIs.
She added that "this has raised many
questions including whether the local
population gain any advantage from such
kinds of investments, predominantly when
costs of living are increasingly going
high".
Minister equally noted that indigenous
communities are not getting as many jobs as
they had expected from the tourism boom, and
that they equally feel disenchanted when
they see significant volume of inputs from
agriculture, fishing, livestock, poultry,
transport, accommodation gear and even some
labour services are imported from abroad.
Such trends, would most likely cancel out
good intentions by agents such as European
Commission who are injecting millions in
developing economies to promote pro-poor
tourism, yet some inputs and services which
are locally available continue to be
imported.
She therefore paid heed to proposed major
research to be carried out by Tanzanian
experts seeking to know the extent to which
tourism sector is contributing to the
wellbeing of the citizens.
For her part, the head of the research team,
Professor Lettice Rutashobya of the faculty
of commerce and management at the University
of Dar es salaam (UDSM) said their work
would basically seek to unveil who is
benefiting from what due to the quantum leap
in tourism operations in the country and
what constrains limit inter firm linkages
between tourist operations especially the
foreign owned ones and local suppliers.
"This research is in recognition of the fact
that the multiplier effect created through
backward and forward linkages is higher the
benefits" said Rutashobya adding that
research would not only focus on jobs
creased within tourism industry but also
jobs that are linked with tourism".
Researchers would also analyse the extent to
which tourism is linked with other sectors
and how sustainably is it contributing to
the development of the home economy and
poverty reduction.
Rutashobya said that the study would be
consistent with the national and
international objectives, like the revised
tourism policy of Septembers 1999.
It is going to be a comparative study, so
some work would have to be done in Botswana
on account of the country's achievement in
tourism activities after mining sector.
"We therefore expect that a better
understanding of the situation including
good practices for linkages between the
local business community and tourism
establishments can be determined", she said.
To-date, the sector has been contributing
17.2 percent of country's gross domestic
product (GDP) and directly employs about
300,000 people, with an average growth rate
of 20 percent.
This project has won competitive funding
from the Investing Climate and Business
Environment Research Fund (ICBE-RF)
administered by TRUST AFRICA, Senegal and
funded is by the Canadian International
Development Research Centre (IDRC) and the
Foundation for Sustainable Enterprise and
Development (FSED).The research award is
among only three large grants for the whole
of Africa.
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