Accra Dec. 29, GNA - Mr Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey, Minister of Tourism and Modernization of the Capital City, on Thursday said the year 2005 was a good year for Ghana's tourism industry. He said: " We are on track of achieving over one million tourists target by the year 2007 as people are becoming more aware that tourism development could help in reducing poverty."

The Minister, who was speaking in an interview with the Ghana News Agency, said a lot of projects done by the Ministry in 2005 had been successful. He mentioned the "Joseph Project", a programme that aims at attracting more than one million tourists to the country by 2007 as one of the very successful projects so far. "Response to the project by Africans living in the Diaspora has been very positive," he said, and expressed the hope that come 2007 Ghanaians would realize the full potentials of the tourism industry.

Mr Obetsebi-Lamptey said he was particularly happy about the documentary dubbed "The Presidential Tour" screened by Discovery Channel and said the film, which had so far been screened in the United States was greeted with a lot of amazement as they could not believe the enormous tourism potentials of Ghana. The Minister noted that the film was being used as a tourism tool to sell the tourist potentials of Ghana abroad. "Just as it worked for Uganda, boosting its tourism capacity to 30 per cent around Africa and 60 per cent worldwide, we believe it would work for Ghana", he said.

Mr Obetsebi-Lamptey expressed his gratitude to all persons, who contributed in making the year 2005 a successful one for the tourism industry. He praised the media for publicising activities in the tourism industry and called for stronger collaboration between the media and partners in the industry.