Japanese project to promote Tunisian tourism in Asia

The Tourism Ministry and the Japanese International Co-operation Agency (JICA) signed, on Tuesday, an agreement pertaining to the promotion of Saharan tourism in the Tozeur and Kebili regions with a view to further attracting Japanese and Asian visitors to those southern parts of the country. The project was initiated and is to be funded by JICA, by means of investments worth some 5.4 million dinars. It will be kicked off, according a press release of the tourism ministry, during the present month and will cover a three-year period. The agreement also provides for assisting Tunisia in devising a marketing and communication strategy in the Tunisian southern areas to make known the regions' tourist products and natural riches. It also consists in setting up a collaboration mechanism that rests on public-private partnership for carrying out action plans, strategies and concrete promotion campaigns. A joint committee, made up of representatives of the tourism structures and JICA, will be create within this framework and will hold regular meetings, the ministry's communiqué adds. The agreement on this project was signed by Tourism Ministry Elyes Fakhfakh and JICA Managing Director in Tunis. "This project will greatly contribute to the promotion of Saharan tourism in Tozeur and Kebili," said Mr. Fakhfakh. JICA Managing Director pointed out, during the signing ceremony, that the project will be presented during a future international conference on African development, to be held in 2013 in Tokyo, as a model of North-South co-operation. "It is going to generate jobs and wipe out regional disparities," he also stressed.