Kurdistan
Sasan Othman Awni in a press conference on Sunday. February 8, 2021. Photo: ministry website
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — The Kurdistan Region’s Ministry of Municipalities and Tourism announced on Sunday that its income from tourism decreased by 75 percent in 2020 compared to the previous year.
“The year 2020 saw a difficult situation all over the world due to coronavirus. It affected the economic and financial sectors, and revenue of the regional government hit its lowest in some sectors,” Sasan Othman Awni, Minister of Municipalities and Tourism said at a press conference on Sunday.
“We see that the 2020 income of the ministry [from tourism] declined by 75 percent compared to 2019,” added Awni.
The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) began implementing measures to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus in late February, resorting to partial and complete lockdowns, and imposing widespread restrictions on non-essential movement in March as it saw its first coronavirus cases in early that month.
It began to gradually ease measures over April and May as case numbers receded. Despite cases spiking in late May, the government only briefly attempted to reintroduce some of the stricter measures again.
According to Zirak Biko, head of the Erbil Hotels and Restaurants Association, the end of 2020 and beginning of 2021 have seen a higher number of tourists than in prior months.
Recent visitors are mostly from Baghdad and southern Iraq, Biko told Rudaw English on Monday.
There are more than 370 hotels and motels in Erbil, at least 200 restaurants, 160 cafes, 164 fast food places and at least 50 restobars, said Biko.
The Region has been criticized for lifting lockdown and other coronavirus measures, as cases saw a dramatic increase.
“Under economic pressure, the Kurdistan Regional Government started to reopen touristic sites and trade with neighbouring countries, and these reopenings were not well organized,” Adham Rashad, the World Health Organization (WHO) representative to Iraq told Rudaw last September.
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