The tourist arrival in Myanmar rose to 18% last year to 3.44 million visitors, despite there is an international condemnation over the treatment of its Rohingya Muslim population.
The Ministry of Hotels and Tourism of Myanmar said it had expected that there are around 3.5 million visitors visited in the country last year, after arrival numbers dipped to 2.9 million in 2016 from 4.7 million in the previous 12 months.
U Myint Htwe, Deputy Director General at the Ministry of Tourism in Myanmar, said that the figure of the increase in tourists happened after Myanmar’s close participation in different global travel trade fair and promotional events.
In the month of December 2017, the quality of the banking statistics of Myanmar was called into question by the World Bank.
It is in news that there are around 700,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled Myanmar’s Rakhine State to neighboring Bangladesh since August last year when militants from the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army attacked 25 police and army posts, killing a dozen security officials. The military officials of Myanmar responded with what it calls “clearance operations,” with reports of security forces and Buddhist vigilantes indiscriminately attacking the Rohingya and burning their villages.
In November, the U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson condemned treatment of the Rohingya Muslims as “ethnic cleansing.” They expected 3.5 million in 2017 but we only received 3.44 million due to natural disaster and H1N1.
In 2015, the World Travel & Tourism Council estimated that travel and tourism sector in Myanmar would grow by 8.4 percent by 2025 to become the country’s most premier contributor to gross domestic product. It is also estimated that tourism could contribute $14.1 billion to economy of Myanmar by 2030 and employ around 2.3 million people.
