Meets tourism operators in Cabo Delgado

The Minister of Culture and Tourism, Eldevina Materula, has met tour operators in the city of Pemba, in Cabo Delgado, to address the current tourism scenario. At the meeting, tourism operators spoke of the need to cooperate in leveraging local tourism through the combination of offers from various segments, such as water sports, sport fishing, boat tours and water sports, entertainment and gastronomy. The tourism operators at the meeting also spoke of the pertinence of creating a tourist itinerary for the city of Pemba and other destinations in the province They also expressed concern resulting from the terrorist attacks and the Covid-19 pandemic, which have been a major constraint for the development of tourism recently. Problems related to access routes to tourist resorts, the issue of airport tariffs and the introduction of the tourist tax were also discussed.

The Minister of Culture and Tourism, Eldevina Materula, said that actions were underway to leverage tourism and congratulated operators for their resilience in the face of all the negative factors plaguing the area, encouraging them to maintain hope of improvement in the near future.

“We are pleased to see the resilience of tourism operators, the ability to look to tomorrow and foresee improvements. The sector’s concerns are the government’s concerns. That is why, very soon, we will hold a Tourism Forum, to be attended by the varied sectors which most contribute to tourism actually happening – transport and communication, infrastructure, energy – and we will discuss and resolve the sector’s concerns,” she said.Faced with the adversity brought on by the pandemic, Materula said: “We, as a government, are taking concrete measures to better recover the economy.” The minister acknowledged that instability in the province has had negative effects on tourist activity, and that this worried the sector, but was optimistic that the situation would be overcome. The meeting with tourism operators follows the minister’s visit to Cabo Delgado, framed in the celebrations of the Artist’s Day and SADC creation , whose official ceremony was held on 14 October.

“The choice of Cabo Delgado for the celebrations is justified by the fact that we are aware that, even in the midst of great adversities, artists in this part of the country remain themselves, delighting people’s hearts and feed the spirit,” the minister said. “We came here from Cabo Delgado to say that the Mozambican people love their artists, because they know that a world without the arts is a world without life. Therefore, we have come to pay tribute to our creators, here in the cradle of freedom.”