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The Government on Wednesday launched the religious tourism policy with a view to expand the branches of the sector. Tourism and Hospitality Industry Minister Walter Mzembi told journalists that religious tourism was born out of the realisation that millions of people from across the world visited local shrines such as the Bernard Mzeki shrine in Marondera, hence the need to treat these as attractions.
“We have for a long time realized that religious tourism is going to be one of the major branches of tourism. Religious tourism joins the other branches of tourism destinations that include leisure, health, sport, historical, and liberation tourism and so many other parts of tourism as part of key drivers of the collective that we call tourism today,” he said.
Minister Mzembi said inclusion of religion as tourism was borne out of the desire to come up with new tourism products other than the known resorts such as Victoria Falls and Great Zimbabwe.
“We have designated the entire country as tourist development zones,” he said.
In the global village, religious tourism causes the movement of over 300 million people to key religious sites every year.
He said it was high time Zimbabwe tapped into religious tourism as statistics showed that 30 percent of the world’s travelling public was motivated to do so by religion contributing $18 billion annually.
“We want to be part of that action,” he said.
He cited Prophet Emmanuel Makandiwa, the Bernard Mzeki shrine in Marondera, the ZAOGA Prayer Mountain in Bindura and the Johane Marange shrine in Mutare as having potential to contribute to tourism receipts since about one million people went there for pilgrimages.
Minister Mzembi said a religious tourism board would be constituted by the first quarter of next year with the task of organizing a conference the same year.
Meanwhile, the minister said Government would begin charging taxes on profitable projects that were operated by churches such as transport, conferencing and hotel facilities. “We will not tax tithes, offerings and donations. We are doing that to facilitate growth of churches,” he said. – New Ziana
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