Fellow Sierra Leoneans, if we really love our country, we need to pay close attention to our economy which currently survives on donor aid and loans, for which our grandchildren would be paying for a considerable period of time. The question to ask is for how long can we afford to live in debt like this when we have our own natural resources? One good example is TOURISM. The Kingdom reported that it benefitted £115billion in 2009 from tourism equivalent to 8.9% of GDP 2.899 million jobs or 1 in 12 depend on tourism to the UK. visitors spend up to £18billion each year giving the govt tax receipts of £3billion annually. Our sister country Gambia gets 12% of its GDP of almost $1billion dollars from tourism supporting over 100 thousand jobs out of a population of 1.7 million. Life expectancy in the Gambia is 58 years. In contrast I look at our country. I recall as a boy the days when Yazbeck was bussing in loads of tourists. Today we have a population of 6 million with a GDP of 2.9 billion dollars. Our life expectancy is 47 years Our tourism department reports that only 8000 jobs depends on tourism. The national tourist board talk about the benefits of tourism and makes the foll claims: "It is in pursuit of these benefits that the government of Sierra Leone had identified tourism as a priority sector for development – thus tourism has now become the largest contributor to the economy of Sierra Leone after mining and agriculture". Is that true? I cannot for the life of me understand why our country is not aggressively investing in tourism rather than investing i loans? are there any ideas members can suggest to aggressively boost our tourism industry in the shortest possible time in order to reduce our over dependency on aid and loans?
Posted on: Wed, 12 Jun 2013 14:51:15 +0000
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