The Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiques, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) signed a cooperation package for technical assistance to restore tourism in Covid-19 last week, for resilience, sustainability and the promoting inclusive growth of the EU sector in Egypt.

“The package comes at a crucial time as it helps the Department of Tourism and Antiques and its affiliated agencies, as well as the private sector, to embrace the ongoing changes,” said Khaled El-Enany, Minister for Tourism and Antiques.

The Egyptian tourism sector has been hard hit by Covid-19. Revenues fell nearly 70 percent to $ 4 billion in 2020. The number of tourists visiting Egypt fell from 13.1 million in 2019 to 3.5 million last year, El-Enany told Reuters. Overseas occupancy rates in Egyptian hotels fell to just 10 to 15 percent of the 2019 level.

“The agreement is an example of deepening cooperation to advance sector support and accelerate progress to meet Egypt’s future priorities,” said Minister for International Cooperation Rania Al-Mashat, adding that the package aims to formulate recommendations for stimulating the sector and maintaining jobs. Protecting the most vulnerable, strengthening supply chains in the tourism sector and supporting the transition to the circular economy and supporting institutions such as small and medium-sized enterprises operating in the sector.

The package includes areas of intervention organized around three main pillars: economic recovery, marketing and promotion, and institutional strengthening and resilience.

Five tasks are addressed: training inspectors and officials in the tourism sector on impact assessments and protocols; developing tourism recreation incentive programs to stimulate tourism through benchmarking with other tourism-dependent countries; a review of the institutional restructuring of the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities; a review of the effectiveness of the operational logs in terms of safety, hygiene and safety; and building tourism companies’ resilience to adapt to Covid-19, including safety and hygiene.

The package builds on measures already taken by the EBRD as part of its Crisis Solidarity Package to help existing customers cope with losses from Covid-19 lockdowns. The aim is to expand this support package at the customer level with technical assistance at the state level in order to enable a quick and sustainable recovery of tourism.

Since March 2020, the whole world has been grappling with the effects of the new coronavirus, which is considered an unprecedented global health crisis and the effects of which can be felt in all areas of society and the economy.

In May 2020, the WTO forecast that the effects of Covid-19 will result in international tourist arrivals falling by 60 to 80 percent compared to 2019. In 2009, international tourist arrivals fell by four percent as a result of the global financial crisis, while the SARS outbreak in 2003 led to a decline of only 0.4 percent.

The Egyptian government has taken various containment measures against the pandemic, including a lockdown.

This included a travel ban, tourist activities and major sporting events. The containment has helped limit the levels of infections in Egypt and the government has made various decisions in support of tourism as well as investors and sector workers and issued health guidelines to resume inbound tourism.

* A printed version of this article will appear in the January 21, 2021 issue of Al-Ahram Weekly.

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