Tourism boost: Hotels Association seeks gov’t support for revival

The Ghana Hotels Association has said that it is looking forward to government’s support in some specific areas to revive the hospitality industry.
This comes after the Minister of Finance announced that the government will launch eight new initiatives in the coming months in the health, tourism, trade, agriculture, and infrastructure sectors to boost economic growth, which will also contribute to job creation.
Outlining these areas in the hospitality industry, the Greater Accra Chairman of the Association, Benjamin Afunya, highlighted the need to scrap the multiplicity of taxes and levies and provide capital support through a loan facility tailored to meet the needs of the hospitality industry.
Benjamin explained to Samuel Eshun on the Happy Morning Show: “The government is talking about domestic tourism but our challenge is that multiplicity of taxes and levies are killing us. And that is making our rates go high and because of that, patronage is low. So, this has caused us to suffer greatly when there is a disaster or an unforeseen circumstance”.
With respects to capital support, the Chairman shared that managing a hotel is a very capital- intensive activity which requires one to invest heavily. He thus noted that it is the Association’s expectation that government will come to the aid of hoteliers with a form of grant or a loan facility with less interest.
He added, however, that the Association will prefer that this form of support will be tailored to the hospitality industry for improved results.
“As was done with the stimulus package by NBSSI, bringing all of us together didn’t help us. So we plead with government to give us something that is industry related that can help our work and bring us back on our toes so that we can employ workers”, he added.
Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, has said that government will speed up the implementation of its proposed Jobs and Skills Program to promote skill development and offer job opportunities to the youth.
This promise comes after some Ghanaian youth took to social media to express their displeasure at what they describe as a failure on the part of successive governments to improve the lives of the citizenry.
Thousands of posts backed by the hashtags #FixTheCountry, #FixTheCountryNow, and #FixTheCountryGhana highlighted issues such as rising youth unemployment, dilapidated health system, skyrocketing home-renting structure, poor road networks among others.
By: Alberta Dorcas N D Armah