Tourism Minister targets sector to become number one contributor to Ghana’s GDP by 2025
As part of effort to boosts Ghana’s tourism industry, sector minister Dr. Mohammed Awal has disclosed that the Ministry wants the sector to become Ghana’s number one GDP contributor by 2025.
Dr. Awal revealed this ambition of the Ministry during a media interaction in Accra on Wednesday.
According to the Minister, Tourism, Arts and Culture sector is currently ranked third in terms of contribution to Ghana’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) just behind cocoa and gold. This ranking, according to the Minister, shows the potential of the sector to improve over its current performance.
Addressing the media, he indicated that with proper policies and programs coupled with the competitive advantage Ghana has in the tourism sector, the industry can overtake cocoa and gold by 2025.
Highlighting some of measures tabled by the Ministry to achieve this target, Dr. Awal explained that the Ministry is expecting over 1 million foreign visitors to tour Ghana this year adding that the figure is expected to grow exponentially in the subsequent years.
He added that with this projection, Ghana can rake in over $3billion in revenue if these tourists spend an average of $2500 per person.
On the domestic tourism front, Dr. Awal further noted that local tourism has not been neglected in this ambition of the ministry as 1 million Ghanaians are targeted to travel across the country for the purposes of tourism.
“The Tourism, Arts and Culture sector is number three in terms of contribution to Ghana’s GDP. After cocoa and gold, we are number three. But by 2025, we want to be number one and we are going to be number one by the grace of God. Why do we say so? We are targeting one million visitors this year. Each visitor spends an average of $2400. Before the COVID, they were spending $2600, $2800 per visitor. They spend within one week and ten days. We are hoping and we working that by 2024, 2025 we shall have 1.5 million visitors and it will grow exponentially from there on, “Dr. Mohammed Awal explained.
He added that, “so if we have 1.5miilion people visiting, they spend 12 days to 2 weeks, and they spend about $2500 per person, we could be hitting over $3 billion. That is international arrivals. For domestic tourism, we want to get one million people this year. We think Tourism, Arts & Culture by 2025 should be generating not less than $3.5bilion to $4billion and that will be the number contributor to GDP.”
Among a number of initiatives implemented to achieve this ambitious target, the Government of Ghana in collaboration with the World Bank is spending over GHC350 million to modernize the tourist sites in the country.
This investment, the government believes will enable the tourism sector become one of the main catalysts for economic growth and development.
Source: ABC News
