The tourism industry will have to expand and ensure that profits go to Cambodian workers if it is to compensate financially for the garment sector’s anticipated decline, Tourism Minister Lay Prohas said Thursday.
The minister said tourism could surpass the garment industry as the country’s most important sector in 2005, after the country loses its textile quota to the US market. The quota system has been credited for allowing garment factories to flourish into an industry employing some 250,000 workers, mostly women.
Tourism is a $1 billion industry here, running second to the
$1.6 billion garment and textile industries. “I believe that tourism is going to be the big earner sector to help economic growth,” Lay Prohas said in an interview.
Tourist arrivals have bounced back from dismal numbers recorded a year ago, when outbreaks of severe acute respiratory syndrome and avian influenza, as well as the war in Iraq, kept potential visitors away.
According to Tourism Ministry statistics released this month, 676,165 tourists visited Cambodia through September 2004, compared to 701,014 in all of last year. The government set a goal of attracting 1 million tourists annually.
But the tourism sector faces some problems, Lay Prohas said. Too much of the money spent by tourists goes to foreigners who have invested in hotels and restaurants, and much of the food they eat is imported from neighboring countries, he said.
“I want to see [Cambodian] people selling their own vegetables, fruits, food and things that a tourist can buy,” Lay Prohas said. “I don’t want tourist money to go out of Cambodians’ hands.”
To boost growth, the ministry is looking to India and China for more visitors, he said. About 5,000 visitors from India come to Cambodia annually, of about
1 million who come to Southeast Asia each year, he said.
“We are opening the door for Indian and Chinese tourists,” the minister said. Korea, Japan and the US are the largest sources of tourists here, statistics show.
Many could be looking to tourism next year for economic salvation if garment factories close and flee to cheaper markets in Vietnam or China. Thon Virak, deputy director of the Commerce Ministry’s export department, said the garment factory’s fate could hinge on help from China.
“If China will help us [by encouraging investment] instead of competing against us” then the industry will survive, he said.
But with so much uncertainty around the garment sector, the government shouldn’t pin its hopes on a tourism boom, warned Kong Chandararot, an economist with the Cambodia Development Research Institute.
“I believe the garment sector is going to have less potential impact on the economy’s growth, but that doesn’t mean that tourism is going to race ahead of the garment industry,” he said. “After 2004, it’s hard to predict the situation in those two sectors.”
