After previous plans to revamp the tourism sector failed, stakeholders have now pinned all hope to rejuvenate this sleeping giant on Bill that has been in Parliament for two years. The Tourism Bill 2005 that has been gathering dust in the House without making it to the floor is now expected to be enacted into law before the end of this year following the intervention of President Yoweri Museveni. Gorillas in Bwindi National Park are a leading tourist attraction It seeks to remove the legal and institutional bottlenecks to the development of the tourism industry that presently accounts for 25% of the country’s total export earnings .

When passed into law, the Uganda Tourism Board (UTB) will be reconstituted to become an effective agency to market Uganda’s tourism potential. A reorganised UTB will have more resources, more qualified personnel to turn round the ailing tourism sector. Among the additional sources of revenue for UTB that the new law seeks to establish is a 10% levy on accommodation revenue earned by hotels. “UTB is understaffed and resource less. It is hard for it to turn round the tourism industry without the technocrats to plan and implement policies,” Gideon Badagawa, the Director Policy Advocacy at the Private Sector Foundation Uganda.

The new tourism law also wants all domestic air operations to be tax exempt so as to encourage tourists to use domestic planes to fly to tourist sites in the country. It is hoped that this would work well after the planned overhaul of all up-country airstrips. On average, a flight from Entebbe to Arua is Shs 250,000. Kasese aerodrome will be upgraded to be able to land large aircraft by November this year, according to Civil Aviation Authority. A waiver on import duty on all tour vehicles and equipment is also expected if the Bill is passed in its current form so as to encourage more investors into the business of tour operators.

Industry analysts say that a waiver of all import duty on safari vehicles and equipment would also ensure that the industry has new and improved equipment for efficient service in the industry that leave an impression on consumers of the service. The new law comes to strengthen a case previously made by the players in the industry urging government to direct more resources towards collating data on tourism activities for better performance evaluation of the sector as well as recognise tourism as an export that is VAT zero-rated. Investors in tourism want VAT zero-rated for at least seven years in order to stimulate growth of hotels, lodges and tour operators.

The new legislation is viewed by industry players as the only remaining hope to make Uganda’s tourism industry competitive after it has been battered to almost oblivion by decades of insecurity near major tourist sites like Bwindi National Park and Kidepo Park in Karamoja. In 1992, industry players and technocrats in the ministry of Tourism produced the country’s first Tourism Development Master Plan aimed at revamping the industry, but was never fully implemented. The master plan emphasised among aspects the promotion of what was then termed as community tourism through which foreign tourists would come to Uganda to learn about the diverse cultures and way of life in rural areas.

It also aimed at developing all potential and yet undeveloped tourist sites as a means to widen choices available to tourists. It had been expected that tourist arrivals would increase to over 800,600 by 2000 and would earn the country $ 823 million per annum. It never was. Seven years since 2000, Uganda receives about 500,000 tourists per year. The latest effort to add energy into Uganda’s tourism was a donor-funded Tourism Policy named the Uganda Sustainable Tourism Development Programme. The programme, supported by the European Development Fund has been on since 2003 and will wind up at the end of 2007. The programme aimed at strengthening the tourism sector to help the country diversify sources of revenue.

It was hopped that by the end of the programme, rural communities surrounding protected areas would have their incomes boosted. Enhanced tourism revenue will also benefit the bio diversity conservation aims of the country. However, analysts say the government has paid only lip service to the development of tourism with little money allocated to the sector annually. For example, in the 2007/8 budget there was no money allocated to the development of the sector because officials of the ministry did not present their budget to the treasury, sources in the ministry of Finance said. Badagawa said that because tourism is just a department in the ministry, little attention is accorded it in terms of real promotion programmes. He said the sector needed more resources to develop capacity and ensure that international standards like quality of staff in hotels and other tourism centres conduct themselves professionally to the satisfaction of tourists.

He said classifying and grading hotels was vital. Investment in water and electricity extension to rural areas where tourist sites are located also needed to be looked into, said Badagawa. More than 83% of Uganda’s population lives in rural areas with only 2% of them having access electricity.