Maravi

Zambians' scrutiny of government performance cheers Lubinda

Zambians' scrutiny of government performance cheers Lubinda
By Allan Mulenga
Tue 10 Apr. 2012, 13:28 CAT

GIVEN Lubinda says it is good that Zambians have started questioning what the government is doing and benchmarking its work against the party manifesto. And Lubinda has expressed concern over the rising number of cases relating to human-animal conflict in the country.

Featuring on ZNBC's Culture Remodeling programme on Sunday evening, Lubinda, who is foreign affairs and tourism minister, said the PF government's campaign was to make policy changes in the tourism and hospitality industry.

"Zambians have now started questioning what we are doing and benchmarking our work against our policy statements and manifesto statements. The PF manifesto with regard to tourism development is anchored on 10 policy issues, one of them is … the issue of legislative changes, policy changes in the area of tourism and hospitality," he said.

Lubinda said the government would endeavour to develop the tourism sector so that it could create employment for the people and contribute to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth.

"As we speak now you may be aware of the fact that the tourism sector only contributes 3.1 per cent GDP, we think that it can be grown further than that," he said.

Lubinda said the government had come up with a deliberate policy to encourage private sector participation in the industry.

"In so doing, therefore we are also encouraging the emergence of small tourism sector enterprises. This is the reason you have been hearing us talking about encouraging banks to reduce base lending rates, so that people can borrow and put their money in hospitality institutions, restaurants, lodges, hotels and so on and so forth," he said.

Labels: GIVEN LUBINDA, PF, TOURISM

posted by MrK @ 3:10 PM