By Hajaratu Kalokoh
The latest report on the Tourism sector in Sierra Leone has revealed that 44% of hotels and guest houses are not registered with the National Tourist Board.
The report, titled: National Tourism Census in Sierra Leone, which was done by the Ministry of Tourism in collaboration with Statistics Sierra Leone, was launched on Monday. It reveals that there are 459 accommodation facilities in the country which are either hotels or guesthouses, only 56% of which are registered.
The figure is a shocking revelation that points to how much the government has lost in terms of revenues.
According to the Director of Tourism, Mohammed Jalloh, most of the unregistered accommodations are in the Southern and Eastern regions of the country.
“Most of the establishments that are not registered are in far places (such as) Kailahun, Pujehum, and Bonthe. These are places that are difficult to access,” Jalloh said at the launch of the event at the Miata Conference Center in Freetown.
“The recommendation going forward is for us to support the classification department and put more people to be able to go out there and collect some of these fees,” Jalloh added.
Deputy Commissioner General at the National Revenue Authority, Jeneba Bangura, said the sector had the potential to be a huge revenue portfolio for the country.
Sierra Leone has been struggling for years to diversify its economy from mining and agriculture. Tourism has been tipped as the likely source of high GDP output. And this was captured in Ms Bangura’s statement.
“Tourism is an important contributor to revenue generation through goods and services charge levied on hotels and restaurants. NRA is particularly pleased with the launch of this report. It will give us an insight into what has been obtaining there and that will further guide us in mapping out strategies for the enhancement of revenue collection in that respect,” Bangura said.
According to the study, the major reason behind the high number of unregistered accommodations in the country is the lack of tourism awareness and limited number of staff working for the tourist board to do monitoring.
Deputy Statistician General, Stat SL, Andrew Bob Johnny, said during the launch that the figure show how much Sierra Leone was losing in the tourism sector.
“This anomaly had led to Sierra Leone not fully optimizing the benefit from tourism, particularly in the area of revenue generation and the attraction of substantial investments,” Johnny said.
He added that government is now capable of making informed decision based on the statistics that had been gathered on the sector.
“The availability of a timely, credible and accurate database was to allow government to make decisions from an informed point of view for planning, policy formulation and monitoring the performance of the sector, while ensuring that accurate data is provided to both local and international operators,” she stated.
Minister of Tourism, Memunatu Pratt, explained how the ministry will now use the data they have collected to improve the sector.
She said: “Tourism is a highly complex activity that requires Geographic Information System (GIS), especially in supporting decision making for tourism planning. GIS is an information system that has the capability of answering question about where facility resources are located, how to get there and how you plan and which place or area you may wish to visit.”
The report generally focused on identifying, assessing and analyzing five major areas within the tourism sector; tourism natural resources, cultural resources, event resources, activity resources and services resources.
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