DUSHANBE, September 29, 2008, Asia-Plus — The republican tourism exhibition, entitled “Tourism in Tajikistan – 2008,” was held at the Kokhi Vahdat State Complex in Dushanbe on September 27.
The exhibition, staged by the Committee for Youth, Sports and Tourism Affairs under support of the government, was held within the framework of the national tourism development program designed for the period till 2014.
Representatives of diplomatic mission and international organizations active in the country visited the exhibition that was held in the following sections: national tourist organizations; tour agents; mountaineering; ecotourism; excursion tours; mountain-walking tourism, cultural-historical tourism; ethnographic tourism; and hotels and resorts.
According to Muzaffar Begmatov, head of the tourism development directorate within the Committee for Youth, Sports and Tourism Affairs, a forum of experts in tourism from member nations of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) was held on sidelines of the exhibition. Tajikistan coordinates tourism issues in this international security forum in Central Asia. CICA was launched by Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev in 1992 and its members include Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, China, Mongolia, Egypt, India, Iran, Israel, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Palestine, Korea, Russia, Tajikistan, Thailand, Turkey and Uzbekistan. CICA observer states are Indonesia, Japan, Ukraine, and the United States. International organizations such as the United Nations and the OSCE have also been involved in an observer capacity.
134 tour operators currently function in Tajikistan, while in 2000, only 20 tourist firms operated in the country.
According to the Committee for Youth, Sports and Tourism Affairs, more than 150,000 foreign tourists have visited Tajikistan over the first six months of this year.
We will recall that press release issued by The Principals’ Group, which is a coordination body of ambassadors and representatives of donors and international financial Institutions in Tajikistan, on June 13, 2008, noted that although Tajikistan was ranked near the bottom of an international tourism index (110th position out of 124), there had been a 60% growth in receipts from tourism in 2007.
