Mrs Ama Benyiwa-Doe, Central Regional Minister, on Friday said tourism could be a potent tool in the fight against rural poverty if well planned and developed.
She said the region had for the past two decades been at the forefront of tourist attraction and had been the only one to make deliberate policy attempt to use tourism as a tool for fostering economic growth.
Mrs Benyiwa-Doe said this at a day's workshop on Tourism Sensitization for Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) under the theme;
"Tourism as a Poverty Reduction Tool."
The workshop was organized by the Regional Coordinating Council (RCC) in conjunction with Tourism Consult, a tourism development company, for the various MMDAs in the region.
It is to help identify the tourism potentials in their respective areas and develop them into tourist sites to create jobs and generate income to enhance their economies.
Mrs Benyiwa-Doe expressed regret that over the years, not much effort had been made towards diversifying the region's huge tourism attractions to improve upon the local economy.
She therefore advised Local Government Agencies to be at the forefront of creating a congenial environment for the development of tourism in their areas.
In a presentation on "Tourism as a Tool for Poverty Reduction," Mr. Kwaku Adutwum Boakye, Chief Executive of Tourism Consult, said 80 per cent of the world's poor countries which resorted to tourism development, increased their revenue and created employment, thereby stimulating other economic activities.
He said tourism in Ghana contributed to seven per cent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and employed about 200,000 people adding that last year, Ghana made close to $1.4 billion in tourism.
Mr Boakye said tourism could be used as a poverty reduction tool because it was labour intensive, stimulates linkages and cost effective.
In terms of tourism development, he said there was the need to identify and document tourist attractions, develop real infrastructure, build the capacities of personnel and create systems for receiving guests.
He called for the improvement in food and facilities such as transport and accommodation.