Mozambique: Government expects 10 million tourists a year

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Mozambique: Government expects 10 million tourists a year

6:54 CAT | 21 Dec 2022

Screen grab: TVM

The Minister of Culture and Tourism, Eldevina Materula, reaffirmed on Monday that Mozambique could attract ten million tourists a year, by the end of 2025.

She expressed her conviction during a ceremony in Maputo, where she outlined the government’s electronic visa (e-Visa) platform.

The e-visa is in an initial stage of implementation, and its purpose is to promote a greater flow of tourists and business people to the country, she said, in line with the government’s package of 20 Measures of Economic Acceleration (PAE). The e-visa is measure 13 of the PAE, “and we hope that the impact will be that, by 2025, we can achieve the desired target of 10 million tourists to our country”.

The e-Visa, said Materula, will simplify the obtaining of entry visas. It will also fight against corruption, improve the business environment, stimulate good governance, attract more foreign investment, and drive tourist activity.

In the first half of 2022, according to Materula, Mozambique recorded about 350,000 international visitors, compared with some 200,000 for the same period of 2021, which was an increase of 64 per cent.

In 2017, after the introduction of the frontier visa for tourism, 1.5 million visitors were recorded. This rose to more than 2.9 million in 2018, an increase of 89 per cent. As for tourism revenue, this rose from 150 million dollars in 2017, to 241 million in 2018, an increase of 60 per cent.

But tourism was severely hit by the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and has yet to recover. However, Materula was optimistic that within a fairly short period, tourist numbers will again be numbered in the millions.

Since the introduction of the e-Visa platform, there have been about 30 online requests for visa. The first person to be granted an e-Visa is now in Mozambique.

Source: AIM