Moldovan PM, World Tourism Organization secretary general discuss opportunities for developing domestic tourism

Chisinau, 05 June /MOLDPRES/ – Prime Minister Pavel Filip met with the Secretary General of the World Tourism Organization (WTO), Taleb Riffai, today. The dialogue took place in the context of premiere for Moldova, on 05 – 07 June, of the Meeting of the Committee of the UN International Organization of Tourism (IOT) for Europe, the government’s communication and protocol department has reported.

On this occasion, the Premier thanked the WTO Secretary General for the opportunity to organize this event in Chisinau, stressing that the Cabinet has had the perspective of turning tourism into an economic growth promoter. "I count a lot on this branch, including on domestic tourism. There is untapped potential and we are working on policy-making in such a way that we have a sectorial development. We want to create clear rules and have regular meetings with the economic agents in the field to identify the problems they might have faced," said Pavel Filip.

However, several measures were taken to stimulate the activity of tourism enterprises, particularly with a view to reducing bureaucracy. It is the simplification of the procedure for entry to Moldova for foreign citizens, the reduction of the number of reports, the number of permissive acts and the draft of the new law on tourism is currently under discussion on the parliamentary platform. Here, the Prime Minister stressed that the experience and expertise of the WTO as to be very valuable for Moldova.

WTO Secretary General Taleb Riffai highlighted the importance of tourism globally, with the sector accounting for around 10 per cent of the world GDP, and reminded us actually living in the era of tourism and travel.

Related to it, Taleb Riffai welcomed all the measures taken by the Moldovan authorities and noted that for the development of the sector, being important to have an efficient co-operation between all the relevant structures or the ones having connection with the domain. "Besides the positive impact on economic growth, tourism development also implies important social achievements, such as opening new jobs. Moldova is an interesting and special country, and the emphasis should be placed on the message sent to potential tourists, that it is not important what we have, but what we do with what we have," said the WTO Secretary General.

Also, the sides discussed the need to improve the production of the field statistics, and the real situation regarding the number of foreign tourists is probably much better than the one reported today. According to official data, the number of crossings of the state border by foreign citizens at the entrance to the Republic of Moldova amounted to 3.4 million people in 2016, increasing by about 20 per cent compared to 2015.