The Egyptian government plans to attract an extra 1 million tourists a year to Egypt every year for the next decade, more than doubling the current total to 18 million by 2015, President Hosni Mubarak said Sunday.
he government’s 10-year plan will require building 15,000 extra hotel rooms a year, bringing the total to 300,000, he said in a speech in the south Egyptian town of Luxor, the center for visits to many of Egypt’s pharaonic sites.
To achieve this target, the private sector will have to invest at least $1.4 billion a year in the tourism sector, he added.
Mubarak said the government would contribute to the plan through investment incentives and by adjusting the sales tax system so that tourist projects and other service industries could get refunds for the tax on their inputs.
The target is slightly above those mentioned previously by other government officials. Tourism Minister Ahmed el-Maghrabi said in February that his plan was to double the number of tourists visiting Egypt to 16 million by the mid-2010s.
More: usatoday.com
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