Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism Nguyen Ngoc Thien speaks at the session (Source: VNA)Hanoi (VNA) - Competitiveness of Vietnam's tourism industry and solutions tomake it a key economic sector of the country was the main focus of the question-and-answer (Q&A) session withthe minister of culture, sports and tourism on June 5 during the 14 NationalAssembly’s ongoing 7th session.
NA deputy Nguyen Quoc Hung from Hanoi asked Minister Nguyen Ngoc Thien to take breakthroughsolutions to improve the competitive rankings of Vietnam’s tourism, which isnow only 67 among the 136 economies worldwide.
On his reply, Minister Thien attributed this to limitedindicators of tourism infrastructure, priority for tourism, internationalintegration and visa competitiveness of Vietnam compared to other ASEANcountries.
Explaining the slow tourism growth of only 8.8 percent in the first five monthsof 2019, Thien said one of the main causes is that the number of Chinesevisitors to Vietnam decreased in the period, while the figure increased byabout 30 percent in the same period of the previous years.
He stressed the need to enhance tourism promotionin key markets.
Deputy Nguyen Van Quyen from Can Tho asked aboutradical and breakthrough measures to turn tourism into one of the spearhead economicsectors of Vietnam, in the context that the sector makes up only nearly 10percent of the national GDP; and those to resolve conflicts between the goal of developing tourism into a spearhead economic sector and theneed to preserve national identities.
Thien said Vietnam strives to make tourism a key economic sector and thecountry aims to receive between 17 and20 million international visitors and serve 85 million domestic tourists by2020, making up about 10 percent of the national GDP.
The minister underlined the necessity to promote sustainabletourism development without harming the ecological environment or culturalheritage, and affirmed that this is a major problem in the relationship betweenconservation and development for all countries in the world.
He pointed out a number of shortcomings in this work over the past time, suchas neglecting conservation planning and heritage preservation as well asexperts’ voice.-VNA
VNA
