PM opens AMCT in Sana'a

SANA'A, May 27 (Saba) - Prime Minister Ali Mujawar inaugurated here
on Wednesday the 12th session of the Arab Ministerial Council for
Tourism (AMCT).

Opening the session, Mujawar said that tourism became an industry of
a major economic resource for most of the world countries,
particularly Arab ones.

"Yemen realizes the important role tourism plays in the national
economy" Mujawar said, adding that the government always supports
the Ministry of Tourism to be able to show the Yemeni tourist
components to others.

We need mobilizing all experiences of our brothers and friends to
achieve the desired goals and to move forward in the road that we
are still at the beginning of, he said.

The Premier made clear that the government relies on the tourist
sector, which is one of the promising sectors here, to serve the
country developmental trends to raise the economic and social
fields, indicating to the role of the investors to create a
distinctive tourist industry in the country.

The economic global crisis has impacted on a lot of economic areas,
including tourism sector whose rate of decline in 2009 will be worse
than 2008, according to the International Tourism Organization (ITO)
expectations, in addition to the spread of swine flu that will
doable the expectant damages, he said.

The meetings of your council should also focus on how to exchange
information and knowledge and offer facilities to realize the joint
benefit and to activate the Arab-Arab tourism, Mujawar said.

He addressed the participants on the Arab tourism concerns that
varies according to the variety of cultures, awareness of the
tourism significance and achieved tourist infrastructure in Arab
countries, noting that Yemen has one more concern, which is
terrorism.

He said "terrorism damaged the country and the tourist development",
and costs the country an intensive security activity to track the
terrorist acts' perpetrators and tackle the repercussions of such
acts via Tourism Emergency Unite, Tourism Promotion Council and
other concerned bodies.

He finally renewed welcoming the Arab Ministers to Yemen, wishing
them all the best in their meetings.

AF/AF