Tourism can turn our fortunes around

Recently, there have been good indications for the revival of the tourism industry.

The resurgence of the tourism sector seen by cruise ships docking and more chartered flights landing vis-à-vis the same period last year, coupled with more arrivals after the lifting of travel advisories by UK and US among others, is encouraging.

The vigour with which the new Tourism Cabinet Secretary Najib Balala has taken the docket is indicative of the changes to be expected. The budgetary allocation by the Government in the 2015-2016 financial year has been a step in the right direction.

However, some hard questions in the search for direction in this sector must be asked.

This is in light of the bigger economic dilemma the country is facing.

From the figures, the indications are that we have lately been importing far more goods and services than we are exporting.

Looking at the Kenyan economic structure and the needs of the country, imports can only grow faster than exports.

The exports industry has its share of challenges.

Nonetheless, there is need to look at tourism with open eyes and smell the coffee.

It is one sector that can help balance the foreign exchange exits and inflows as we sort out the significant structural issues and seek to tap into the strengths to be offered in manufacturing for export as well as the oil and minerals sectors.

Looking at global numbers, Kenya can essentially grow its tourism returns many times over considering her strength in natural resources and relatively stable political and economic environment.

But we must invest in infrastructure and security.

I strongly advocate growing tourism with the knowledge of what it can do for an economy like Kenya's, which suffers severe job shortages and an imbalanced import/export ratio.

In a nutshell, this is a goose that can lay golden eggs if we balance our economy by growing other sectors to avoid the curse of single-sector economies.