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Egyptian Tourism Minister Zuhair Garranah said that tourism industry was the fastest growing economic sectors in 2009 for the sixth consecutive year in spite of the tough challenges it faced.
Addressing the meeting held by the Egyptian-British Business Association , Garranah stated that Egypt was visited by 12,5 million tourists who spent 12.6 million nights adding that tourism revenues amounted to 10.7 billion dollars whereas with a 2,2% decline in tourists and revenues compared to 2008 whereas world tourism witnessed a 4% retreat.
The minister stressed the importance of British market which has witnessed a 12% increase in tourists coming to Egypt during 2009 compared to 2008.
Reviewing the development in tourist movement from the British market during the last ten years, Garranah noted that the British market has seen a surge in the number of British tourists coming to Egypt as they amounted to1,3 million tourists in 2009 vs. 358.8 thousand tourists in 2000 , pointing out that tourist nights were numbered in 13.79 millions in 2009 vs. 1,9 million nights in 2000.
Egypt's tourism top official assured the significance of tourism industry in increasing the national income , referring that it shares by 11.3% in gross national product (GNP) , 19.3% of total foreign currency , 39.8% of the total income from services exports and 6% of gross income from sales tax.
Additionally, tourism shares by 24% of total income from service tax , 4% of the investments already on ground , and 13% of total investments in the services sector according to Zuhair Garranah who further mentioned that tourism is labor-intensive sector that accommodates 12.6 % of the total labor force in Egypt and provides 2.83 million jobs directly and indirectly.
Moreover, Garranah reviewed the actions taken by Tourism Ministry in the face of the repercussions of global financial crisis, indicating that the most outstanding of these procedures is cementing relations with partners around the world through the organization of common promotional campaigns, in addition to increasing the budget allocated to promote tourism to Egypt including the development of the propaganda campaign and the launch of the new campaign carrying the title "Egypt, where the starts are found".
He , in addition , stressed the need to organize trips for international tourism media representatives so as to acquaint them with the Egyptian tourism product and intensify educational and training programs provided to tourism staff to promote competitiveness of Egyptian tourist destination , pointing out that the Ministry subsidizes more than 20 training programs with the best international educational organizations, one of the main reasons behind Egyptian tourism's win of the Permanent Observer post in the Supreme Commission for Tourism affiliated to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in 2009.
Garranah reiterated that 2010 is uneasy and full of challenges despite the relative improvement from the crisis, warning that the improvement must be carefully dealt with taking into account the 50 trillion dollar loss suffered by global economy in 2009 in addition to the loss of 50 million people around the world for their jobs.
Tourism Minister accentuated the Egyptian government's role in encouraging investment, adding that tourism investment is guaranteed as hotels' investors in Egypt got the world highest profits in the field.
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