A circle of contacts with all the parliamentary parties is inaugurated as soon as possible, and if this becomes possible from next week, the Minister of Tourism George Lakkotrypis together with the Deputy Minister of the Presidency Konstantinos Petridis, in order to convince about the necessity of voting for the government bill. .
As you know, the Government is urgent to put this new institution into operation from 1 January 2017. This goal is not considered impossible, given that the Ministry will operate on the existing structure of the CTO and utilizing, as far as possible, the existing permanent staff of the Agency.
The main objections and reservations on specific provisions of the bill come from the Left and have to do with the assignment of advertising campaigns to promote the tourism product in the private sector. However, the controversy put forward by the government is that this has been the case so far. What is changing is simply the contracting authority, since it will no longer be the CTO but the Ministry of Tourism. Otherwise, the process remains as it is.
Apart from the objections of AKEL - and the given support of DISY of course - an unbalanced factor is the attitude that DIKO and EDEK will observe in the Plenary Session of the Parliament. And this in the light of the change that the relations of DIKO with the government camp are taking, due to disagreements in the management of the Cyprus issue, which have as a result the change of attitude of DIKO in all other issues of internal governance.
The issue of the Ministry of Tourism was raised yesterday at the meeting at the Presidential Palace with the participation of all parties and the main object is the GESS and the reform in Local Government and Public Service. As "F" is informed, President Anastasiadis's appeal to the parties was to promote the debate in the Parliament as soon as possible, to remove any reservations and to pass the bill. The Citizens' Alliance raised the issue of creating three sub-ministries, Energy, Tourism and Shipping, while the government side seemed to favor AKEL's idea for sub-ministries of Tourism and Development.
According to the government bill, the responsibilities of the Ministry of Tourism will be: a) The formulation of an integrated national tourism strategy and the staff planning of the tourism development of Cyprus, (b) the coordination and implementation of the national tourism strategy using horizontal policies, (c) supporting investment in tourism, including the development and implementation of incentives.
Source: Liberal