Rwanda: Majority of Visitors to Rwanda Are Congolese, New Figures Show

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Rwanda News Agency/Agence Rwandaise d'Information (Kigali)

12 August 2008
Posted to the web 12 August 2008

Kigali

The largest bulk of visitor arrivals in Rwanda are coming in from DR Congo - essentially beating even other regional neighbours, according to new figures from the Rwanda tourism office.

For the period 2007, some 416,028 Congolese nationals visited Rwanda, from a global total of 826,374. The Rwanda Office for Tourism and National Parks (ORTPN) - based on new figures compiled by the Statistics Institute, says that most of the visitors are coming from about eleven countries.

ORTPIN officials said last week that tourism revenues are up by 22% as of June compared to the same period last year thanks to the new UN tabulation method that government has adopted.

"In the past tourism revenues statistics primarily looked at holiday visitors and some business travelers where as other countries computed their visitor numbers and revenue to the United Nations World Tourism Organisation standards that consider all international visitors including all business visitors, visitors to friends and relatives (VFR travelers) as well as transit and other purposes", ORTPN said.

Officials have maintained previously that they did not think figures available of people coming to spend in Rwanda were the exact reflection of the visitor numbers. The new development is from collaboration with the National Institute of Statistics.

The latest data indicates that Rwanda is receiving people from Burundi, DR Congo, Uganda, USA, Canada, UK, German, The Netherlands, France, Belgium and Italy.

In the same last year, the rest of the world only contributed just 42,529 visitors. People from other African countries were only 6,435 individuals.

Ugandans and Burundians - the closest nieghbours - are also coming into Rwanda in large numbers - only rivaling DRC, more probably for business and the long-standing family connections.

The United States (16,926), UK (8,713) and Belgium (7591) are western countries from where Rwanda is receiving significant visitors. French nationals number some 3,000 and have been increasing since this year.

Based on the previous statistical methodology, Rwanda earned some $42.3 million last year from some 38,000 visitors. Revenue generation has now reached some US$80million (44 billion Francs) compared to - thanks to the new quantification procedure.

Relevant Links Central Africa Congo-Kinshasa Migration Rwanda Travel and Tourism

The project is financed by the World Bank as part of the $40million Competitive and Enterprise Development Project (CEDP). The program approved in 2001 targets business reform, as well as the banking and non-banking sectors.




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