Gov’t releases one million cedis for tourism industry

Mrs Elizabeth Ofosu-Adjare on Monday said Government had released one million Ghana cedis for the creative arts industry to enhance its development.

She said the creative arts industry had the capacity of creating jobs for the people and also to be the game changer of the economy.

Mrs Ofosu-Adjare said the money would be administered from the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Creative Arts and discussions had already started to ensure that monies were available for the facilities to access.

She gave the assurance that the monies would be used to better the lots of industry players and urged culture and arts facilities to come together to be able to access the monies for their development.

Mrs Ofosu-Adjare said this during the commissioning of the Tourism Development Fund Secretariat in Accra to serve as a pivot for effective and efficient administration of the Tourism Fund.

She said the day marked a significant stage in the lifecycle of the Tourism Development Fund where the Secretariat had been established to assist the Board of Directors to manage and provide absolute financial integrity of the Fund.

She noted that the roles of the Secretariat to achieving maximum collection of the one per cent Tourism Levy and also activating the other sources were imperative as enumerated by Act 817, 2011, which established the Fund.

Mrs Ofosu-Adjare said the Tourism Development Fund was to augment the annual budgetary allocation to the industry to stimulate accelerated development of the tourism sector towards economic transformation.

She said the one per cent tourism levy became operational since November 2012 after the enactment of the Parliamentary Legislative Instrument (L.I 2185), and the conduits for its collection were the industry operators mandated to charge the patrons of their services and products one per cent and remit same to the Fund.

Mrs Ofosu-Adjare said a good number of operators were defaulting on this mandate and, therefore, advised them to comply with the regulations by charging and remitting the accurate amount into the Fund.

She commended those who were adequately fulfilling their mandate by charging the one per cent levy and consistently remitting into the Fund.

She charged the Fund administrator and staff to exhibit high sense of professional standards and maintain ethical and moral values in performance of their roles.