Mazhilis Speaker spoke of openness of the bill on tourism
Mazhilis Chairman Nurlan Nigmatulin believes that tourism should become a new driver of the country's economic growth. Such an opinion he has shared at a round table with representatives of the tourist community of Kazakhstan taken place today, Strategy2050.kz reports with reference to the press service of the lower house of parliament.
The issues relating to tourism has taken place as part of the work on the bill on tourism the Mazhilis considers.
Such meetings are well-established ones held by Mazhilis that allow deputies to discuss bills of great public importance at various venues with the invitation of all willing parties of the Kazakh society.
Mazhilis Speaker Nurlan Nigmatulin has pointed out that today the tourism industry is one of the largest highly profitable and most dynamically developing sectors of the world economy.
“Our country has huge potential for the development of tourism, especially ethnographic and environmental. This was emphasized by Head of State Kassym-Jomart Tokayev in his speech at the International Tourism Forum in Ulytau,” the Mazhilis Speaker has said.
He has also underscored that even those countries that have huge reserves of natural resources are consciously and purposefully developing tourism, among them Qatar, Bahrain, and the UAE.
“Dear economists, financiers, you should first look at tourism as a driver of economic growth,” the Mazhilis.
According to the Mazhilis Speaker, the bill lacks concrete proposals on how to develop the industry.
“We need to adopt the best world experience in this field, thanks to which many countries have built a significant part of their wealth on tourism income. And these are not only the leaders of the tourism market, such as the USA, Spain, France, Italy, China, but also our neighbors - Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan. In these countries, as a result of legislative, organizational, economic and other measures tourism has become one of the dynamically developing areas of the national economy,” he said.
The meeting has also touched novelties in legislation.
So, it is proposed that tourism activities be divided into outbound, inbound and domestic tourism. In this case, only outbound tourism intends to license. And the activity of inbound and domestic tourism is proposed to be carried out in a notification manner.
Special attention was paid to state support for the industry that demonstrated mixed opinions. The working group on the bill is due to look into each of them in order to introduce a decision taking into consideration proposals voiced.
In addition, the bill distinguishes 15 types of industry tourism. However, the mechanism of interaction of the travel company with the subject of a particular type of industry tourism is not defined.
At the same time, as the developer explained, this will be regulated by joint orders of the ministries to which one or another type of tourism belong. However, according to the Speaker of the Mazhilis, this should be spelled out in a specific legislative norm.
The Speaker of the Mazhilis addressed the heads of the ministries of national economy, finance, industry and infrastructure development with specific questions regarding the economic policy of promoting tourism, the possibility of providing tax and customs benefits to business entities, ensuring the availability of air and land transport, developing roads and roadside infrastructure.
According to him, the problem is that the ministry of national economy has not laid down the economic ideology of the bill.
“You need to understand that without investments there is no revenue. This is a universally recognized economic principle,” he said, addressing the first vice minister of finance.
According to Ruslan Dalenov, minister of national economy, the Ministry is ready to introduce a package of proposals into the bill to support the development of tourism in the country.
At the same time, issues of coordination as a whole of the work of all government bodies for the development of tourism have been raised.
The Mazhilis Speaker noted the some points of the bill are open for discussion.
“All points will be most carefully analyzed and discussed. We will try to take into account the maximum range of comments and suggestions on the bill. Only then will we get a high-quality, comprehensively worked out and most importantly, a working law that will ensure the development of tourism in Kazakhstan, provide state support for the tourism industry and expand the tourism infrastructure,” he said.
