<\/p>\n
President Nana Akufo-Addo<\/strong><\/p>\n THE GOVERNMENT has set aside about $10 million as seed money to refurbish existing tourist sites around the country to boost patronage.<\/p>\n President Nana Akufo-Addo made this known when he commissioned the renovated National Museum at Adabraka in Accra over the weekend.<\/p>\n \u201cGovernment has committed US$10 million to rehabilitate and build a number of tourist and heritage attractions, including the Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park, the Cape Coast and Elmina castles, the Manhyia Palace Museum, the Gbewaa Palace Museum and the Yaa Asantewaa Museum among others,\u201d Mr. Akufo-Addo said.<\/p>\n He believes this will boost the country\u2019s tourist activities and rake in an amount of US$4 billion for Ghana.<\/p>\n That, he said was because tourism, arts and culture \u201care effective tools for economic transformation,\u201d and Ghana \u201ccan benefit from this because we possess a significant number of heritage resources.\u201d<\/p>\n Ghana, the President indicated, has 65 per cent of the edifices linked with the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, the oldest European edifice in Africa, whilst the Elmina castle which was built in 1482 is right here in the country.<\/p>\n For him, these and other tourists\u2019 potentials in the country \u201cgives us a considerable advantage\u201d for the country\u2019s ability to attract tourists.<\/p>\n \u201cWith the tourism industry currently ranking as the third largest contributor to our GDP after cocoa and our hydro-carbon resources, government seeks to position the sector to contribute even more to the size our nation\u2019s GDP,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n With that, he said, \u201cI am throwing a challenge to the Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture and its implementing agencies to achieve 2 million international arrivals by the year 2024, with the corresponding revenue of some US$4 billion.\u201d<\/p>\n Apart from that, he said \u201cthe Tourism Ministry should further create some 150,000 jobs through its activities annually, in line with my government\u2019s objective of providing jobs for our young people.\u201d<\/p>\n President Akufo-Addo stressed the belief that \u201cthe renovated national museum\u201d, which he commissioned, \u201chas the potential to stimulate the development of the creative and cultural industry towards the sustainable development of the country.\u201d<\/p>\n He further indicated that \u201cthe renovated museum is expected to attract not less than 120,000 visitors annually and create some 15,000 jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe rapid development of our economy which we are rapidly striving to achieve in order to raise the living standards of the Ghanaian people to dignified levels has to go hand in hand with the flowering of our arts and culture, which defines Ghana\u2019s unique contribution to African and world civilisation,\u201d the President said.<\/p>\n That, he said, was part of reasons his administration is making efforts to boost the tourism sector to ensure that the target of 2 million arrivals is achieved.<\/p>\n On his part, the Minister for Tourism, Arts and Culture, Mohammed Awal, assured the President that his ministry has put in place a comprehensive financial model that will ensure that the national museum is never closed down again as a result of maintenance constrains.<\/p>\n He commended the Minister for Roads and Highways, Kwasi Amoako-Attah and the Minister for Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta, for supporting the agenda of his ministry and government, aimed at improving the nation\u2019s tourism sector.<\/p>\n BY Charles Takyi-Boadu<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\t<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" President Nana Akufo-Addo THE GOVERNMENT has set aside about $10 million as seed money to refurbish existing tourist sites around the country to boost patronage. President Nana Akufo-Addo made this known when he commissioned the renovated National Museum at Adabraka in Accra over the weekend. \u201cGovernment has committed US$10 million to rehabilitate and build a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1070158,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[274,16171,2388,3078,17404],"class_list":["post-1120218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-nana","tag-renovate","tag-sites","tag-tourist","tag-us10m"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1120218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1120218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1120218\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1120218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1120218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1120218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}