Southwest China's Yunnan Province expects to see many more tourists
by the time 2005 rolls around, said a leading official of the
province.
According to the
province's 10th Five-Year Plan (2001-05), Yunnan will be host
to 1.5 million overseas tourists and 55 million domestic sightseers
in the year 2005, the result of an average yearly growth rate
of 9.5 percent and 8.3 percent respectively, said Shao Qiwei,
vice-governor of the province.
At an average growth
rate of 11.4 percent per annum, the province's foreign exchange
tourism revenues will reach US$550 million in 2005 while domestic
tourism revenues will hit 28 billion yuan (US$3.4 billion)
for an average yearly growth rate of 9.2 percent, Shao said.
The provincial
government will seek more channels to enlarge investment in
tourism, one of the province's pillar industries, said Li
Jiating, governor of Yunnan, at a provincial working conference
on tourism recently.
State-owned tourism
enterprises will be reorganized or directly turned into share-holding
corporations, according to Li.
An increasing number
of tourism companies will go public in two years. Foreign
cooperation is being encouraged to boost tourism, the governor
said.
Yunnan wants to
become a major Asian international tourist destination, and
draw a hefty economic boost from this, the official said.
During the Ninth
Five-Year Plan period (1996-2000), the province saw booming
growth in tourism with an average yearly growth rate of 10.9
percent for overseas tourists, 3.2 percentage points higher
than the country's average overseas tourism growth rate.
In the past five
years, the province's foreign exchange revenues from tourism
reached US$1.4 billion with a per annum average growth rate
of 15.5 percent, 3.9 percent higher than the country's average
growth rate for the industry, official statistics indicate.
(China Daily 03/02/2001)
|