INTRODUCE INVESTMENT IN TOURISM, MINISTER URGES FG

BY PROVIDENCE OBUH
The Minister for Tourism, Culture and National Orientation, Chief Edem Duke, has called on the Federal Government to explore some of the opportunities in the Tourism sector of the economy, saying 'there is need to develop carnival as enterprise.'

Duke made the call in a meeting with the Nigerian British Chamber of Commerce (NBCC), revealing that Trinidad and Tobago generated an excess of TT$1 billion in the two-day carnival they had earlier in the year.

'Return on investment is rewarding, more than that, creative industry development is a catalyst for massive job creation, mobilisation, revenue generation, among others,' he said.

He pointed out that Travel and Tourism are critical to Nigeria, explaining that findings show that 6,000 Nigerians travel everyday for tourism to other nations.

He recalled that the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) report of a creative economy in 2010 identified creative industry as the fastest growing sector in the world, largely unaffected in growth indices by the global economic and financial crisis of 2008 till date.

To this end he said, 'The industry consistently grows at 14 per cent per annum for a continuous period of six years between 2004 and 2010, while other economic sector experience reversal, global demand drop in international trade transaction.

He explained that this signifies that the creative industry possesses a great potential for developing countries that are seeking to diversify their economy and leap-frog into dynamic socio-economic development.

He lamented that Nigeria spends so much in enriching other economies, South Africa in particular, while its Tourism sector suffers neglect. 'Again statistics has shown that 6,000 Nigerians leave this country everyday, travelling to other countries because we neglect what we have.'

However, the Minister averred that the country's stakeholders in creative industry has embarked on enormous publicity to address the identified problems, which are difficulty to access finance, piracy and insufficient intellectual property protection, infrastructure deficiencies, power, in-fighting among producers, actors and actresses, lack of quality framework, among others.

'We envy the success of the creative industry in Britain, especially as the largest in the world, in terms of proportional contribution to GDP as well as the gross value added in 2007 to software. '