The Thai government on Tuesday approved a 3.8-billion-baht (US$95 million) budget to revive the country's six tsunami-hit provinces, the state-run Thai News Agency reported on Wednesday.

The 3.8 billion baht would be directed expressly at restoring the tourism sector, which has witnessed unprecedented group cancellations since the disaster.

The budget would be distributed to restore tsunami-damaged tourist resorts in several picturesque sites, launch promotion campaign, develop new tourist attractions and establish beachside security and warning systems, Deputy Prime Minister Suwat Liptapanlop was quoted as saying.

The measures would see the region's tourist industry return to its pre-tsunami level by early October, said Suwat.

More than 5,800 people, at least half of them foreign tourists, were killed in Thailand when the devastating tsunami hit the country's six southern provinces on Dec. 26, 2004.

Though hotels and resorts in a few sites were totally damaged in the disaster, most of the tourism facilities in the country's south, famous for tropical island landscape, were intact by the tsunami.

The Thai government has made efforts to bring back local tourism to normal, which usually counts for one third of the country's total annual tourism revenue.

(Xinhua News Agency February 23, 2005)