Some tourism operators to lose licences
Some of the country’s tourism operators risk losing their operating licenses if they fail to pay tourism levy arrears that they owe to the Ministry of Tourism before the 2013/14 financial year ends.
According to tourism regulations, the operators are supposed to pay one percent to the ministry on any service rendered to their customers.
Tourism operators include restaurants, car hire firms, conference organisers, hunting operators, conference facilities and incentive travel organisers, photographic and other safari operators, tourism enterprise training institutions and facilities, and hotel owners.
Deputy director of tourism responsible for marketing, Sosten Lingwalanya, confirmed that the ministry will withdraw licenses of operators with arrears.
“There are operators that owe us a lot of money through under-declaring or some not paying at all. What these operators should know is that this money helps us to market our tourism sector and by not paying they harm not only our operations but the whole country as well,” he said.
Lingwalanya said that the ministry will from July work with the Malawi Revenue Authority (MRA) to ensure that nobody under-declares the amount of money to be remitted to the ministry.
“The operators should know that the money goes to the Reserve Bank of Malawi (RBM) and is administered by the Tourism Marketing Committee which also includes players from the private sector.
“This arrangement is very good because it gives the private sector a very good chance to have a say in the way we run our tourism sector. I estimate that if every player was remitting then we could be collecting over K250 million per year,” he said.
Malawi Tourism Council (MTC) executive director Sam Botomani agreed with Lingwalanya that performance of marketing activities normally suffer if companies are not remitting the correct levies to the ministry at the right time.
“When all the members comply then we can do a very good job and reach millions of tourists around the world,” he said.
Botomani, however, said government must give a grace period to some businesses that are yet to collect money from clients who transact business on non cash basis.
