By: Sulayman Waan
Minister of Tourism and Culture, Hamat NK Bah has strongly reacted to what he described as misconceptions, misunderstanding and miss presentation regarding the tourism contribution to the country economic, saying the industry contributes nothing less 30% of the GDP.
“Some documents indicate 15%, 18% 20%, 25% 30% or 35% tourism contribution to tourism contribution to Gross Domestic Product (GDP). We belief that the tourism industry contributes nothing less 30% of the GDP,” he said at the opening of a national seminar on the Gambia Tourism Sector Yesterday at a local hotel.
The theme of the seminar: “Measuring Its Value Chain and Exploiting Its.”
According to him, these conflicting figures on the tourism contribution to GDP enable his ministry to accelerate the process for working on the tourism satellites account.
“I’m sure by the end of next year we will be able to have the real statistic of tourism contribution to the GDP,” he added.
“Tourism gets to every community in the country and almost every person is benefitting from it,” he noted.
He pointed out that the national seminar will go a long way in helping government to establish the facts on how much the tourism industry is contributing to GDP.
“It also helps us to generate support from international organizations and donor communities to support the Gambia drive to fully market its tourism potential both nationally and internationally.”
Minister Bah said his ministry is contributing to the economic more than other sectors in the country, stressing that it’s essential for tourism officials to collect accurate statistic to know the specific contribution of the tourism sector to national economy.
He pointed out, said he is not a statistician but he knew the internal and external shock that affects tourism’s contribution to the country economic, noting that he knew when tourism functions to expectation like 2017- 18 tourism season.
“I’m convince that when the satellite account is completed tourism contribution to the economic would be about 25%, 30% to 35%.”
He said the two- day seminar would avail the tourism officials to get the real statistic that is needed by the ministry for policy formulation and added that formulating policies would be extremely tedious in the absent of statistic since preparing policies requires authentic scientific figures.