With eradication of terrorism:

Sri Lanka, safest tourist destination

Text of the speech by Economic Development Deputy Minister Lakshman Yapa Abeywardena on January 12, 2011 at the SAARC Tourism Ministers’ meeting in Katmandu.

SAARC tourism

*Promoting welfare of South Asian people
*Accelerating economic growth
*Tapping full potential of Intra Regional tourism
*Activating SAARC tourism cells
*Supporting SAARC Chambers
*Developing regional strategy for cruise tourism

It is a privilege to lead the Sri Lankan delegation for the SAARC Tourism Minister’s meeting at a time the Tourism Industry in my country has made a paradigm shift. Our Government led by President Mahinda Rajapaksa has made Sri Lanka one of the safest tourist destinations. And this is by completely eradicating terrorism thus fulfilling his commitment to the nation in his first term.

Under his direction, Minister Basil Rajapaksa has taken upon the task of developing the economy on a fast track. It is in this background I attend this Ministers’ meeting with much interest. Tourism in our country is the first beneficiary of total peace. However this, by no means an occasion to relax. We need to visualize the future.

Economic growth

We have to ensure that conflict we experienced, will not rise again under any circumstances. It is for this reason we have embarked on a rapid development of the North and East, for which Tourism is expected to make a positive contribution. As you are aware tourism provides massive employment through direct and indirect opportunities.

We have set a target of 2.5 million tourists into our country by the year 2016. And we believe with our total commitment and dedication, we will get there. In fact we surpassed the target set for 2010 by hosting 654,000 tourists in Sri Lanka with a growth of 48 percent compared to 2009, which is the highest ever since we embarked on tourism, way back in the 60s.

Our objective in broad sense is to promote the welfare of the people of South Asia by accelerating economic growth, social progress and cultural development in the region. Tourism is one such industry that can embrace all these. We are gifted with wide diversity of attractions and we need to ask ourselves seriously why the region enjoys only a small percentage of world tourism.

SAARC is the only region where inter regional travel is greater than intra regional travel. In other words we have not tapped the full potential of Intra Regional tourist movements. Although South Asia recorded highest tourist growth rate in 2010, it receives less than one percent of the global market share.

Regional promotions

Our dependence on other regions is too heavy and the increasing taxation on long haul travel and the economic set back in Europe, will compel us to promote the inter region aggressively hence the importance of our active participation in forums of this nature. We have come a long way since the first Meeting of the Tourism Ministers and the Working Group for tourism.

I have studied the areas that have been covered under Intra Regional and Inter Regional Tourism both in policy as well as operational matters. We have to move forward much faster now in order to be competitive with rest of the world.

Sri Lanka’s experience is a good example why tourism needs to be looked at from SAARC’s point of view. For instance, our regional promotions have resulted in India becoming the largest market. Maldives also has done well in the last two years. We intend enhancing our promotions in other countries in the SAARC too.

We have deliberated mechanism to a way forward on a fast track. We must support and continue to engage the private sector effectively as almost the entire commercial aspect of the industry is in the hands of the private sector.

Ferry service

Our own nationals travel outside SAARC and we must create more awareness for them to experience what is available within our countries.

For this we need to coordinate closely with other Agencies that are connected to tourism such as aviation, transportation etc. We have already taken measures to re-commence the ferry service between Sri Lanka and South India that will naturally boost tourism.

We need to be more focused now on the implementing of outstanding matters. I am closely monitoring this at our end. One effective way of achieving this is to have periodic reviews within our own organizations to see how far we are progressing.

SAARC tourism cells in tourism Ministries must be activated in a way that the communication chain can be shortened. This will enable us to have more meaningful sessions in our future working group meetings conducted by officials.

SAARC members

We are thankful to SAARC chambers for their initiatives and we must find ways and means of supporting them with necessary budgets wherever possible.

In this forum I would like to make a specific proposal for consideration of SAARC Tourism Ministers and that is to develop a regional strategy for cruise tourism with combined travel to two or more destinations within SAARC.

In line with the position taken by President Mahinda Rajapaksa at the Summit held in Colombo in 2008, the SAARC Members underscored the need to address the problem of terrorism in a comprehensive manner. Such an approach contributed immensely to the total elimination of terrorism in my country, after which all avenues opened up for economic development.

That is the Cooperation and Commitment we seek from the SAARC members for the development of tourism to reap maximum benefits for our people.

We must congratulate the Government of Nepal for the initiative to declare 2011 as the Year of Tourism, which incidentally is the Visit Sri Lanka Year.