Mahyoub
Al-Kamali
Media can play a pivotal role in promoting tourism awareness among the people and motivate the private sector to have an active role within the tourist industry. The huge technological progress of telecommunications has provided us with a window of opportunities to unleash diversified media campaigns for the targeting of the tourist market. Through these campaigns we will help create Arab awareness by promoting the environmental tourism in Yemen and Arab lands.
Tourism has become an independent science very much associated with political science. It affects, and is affected by, social sciences including history, sociology and anthropology. This is due to the cultural and environmental differences among individuals within a society or through their different identities beyond regional borders. This necessitates the establishment of media as a means to promote awareness in this regard.
Specialists in media and tourism promotion view the swift spread of news agencies, press, TVs, Radios, as having led to the primary transformation in roles played by telecommunication means. This has consequently resulted in many social and cultural changes by enhancing the cultural contact among nations and civilizations.
Many specialists in the media and development field including Daniel Lerienz, David Raiz Man, Warao, Rogroz have emphasized that telecommunications give access to new ideas and approaches. It is certain that there will be some kind of impact on individuals as well as societies by whatever is transferred to them. They also highlighted that through these means, the people come to understand and are aware of the things happening outside their local communities. This is what we are looking for to achieve tourism awareness. So much so that the people look at any visitor as a positive economic resource backing up their income, and an important element for the cultural contact among nations.

Media Means Promote Tourism Awareness:
In order to enhance the media role in promoting tourism awareness among the Arab communities, there should be a media agenda of action based on correct scientific fundamentals. These programs should reach the people through interviews, and press reports to achieve the following:
1) Coordination with agencies working in the field of tourism in our country and other Arab countries to ensure an interesting stay for Arab and foreign tourists. This will benefit the national economy.
2) Promotion of environmental tourism on a continuous basis and overcoming any hurdles that may deface the reputation of our tourism industry.
3) Connect advertising campaigns of official institutions to those of tourism agencies to activate Arab-Arab tourism, and exert efforts to gain the confidence of tourism markets abroad.
4) Encouragement to the local and foreign private sectors to enhance their investment in the field of environmental tourism within the Arab countries.
5) Urging the public to protect and preserve elements of the environment.
6) Promotion of tourism awareness among our local communities to actively participate in the national and regional tourism activities by making the best use of them.
7) Collection and the analysis of tourism data and conveying it to our targets in the Arab world. Publishing ads about environmental tourism and propagating the abilities of Arab countries in this field locally and internationally.
8) Publication of the legislation and regulations regulating investment opportunities in the field of environmental tourism.
Medias can also promote the tourism awareness by pursuing the following activities:
* Sowing the seeds of change into the society, creating the a conducive atmosphere to improve regional environmental tourism through allocating TV and radio programs. Also by publishing reports and interviews about the tourism potentials, archeological heritage, and handicrafts in each Arab country in general, and in Yemen in particular.
* Focusing on objectives for promoting tourism in the content of media programs, getting the feedback of how many people are accepting these ideas, and to what extent they can interact to protect environmental tourism potentials in protected areas.
* Encouraging the national and regional ambitions of businessmen to establish joint investment tourist projects. This will make available thousands of job opportunities and benefit the investors as well.
* Imposing Arab and foreign tourists social standards, as they come to spend millions of dollars. This will enhance the state trade balance and improve conditions of those working in the field of tourism.
* Providing distinguished services for those working in the field of tourism by giving them access to modern scientific techniques. They should be given regular instructions to preserve the environmental tourism, and provide the people with information about archeological discoveries within the field of environmental tourism.
Thus, there is an essential link between media means and tourism awareness. The promotion which, if achieved, can lead to remarkable changes in the deplorable economic conditions and backward realities in Yemen.
Generally speaking, the media policy needed to promote tourism awareness should highlight, to citizens and Arab tourists, the importance of everyone's national responsibility towards promoting tourism. This goes hand in hand with procedures and policies adopted by the authorities concerned.
To enhance the mechanism of joint regional cooperation in the field of environmental tourism and promoting Arab tourism awareness, there should be some strategies drawn out to conduct tourist campaigns taking into account the following:
1- These campaigns should be culture and education-based, indicating the features distinguishing each country for environmental tourism. Ways to publish these in other countries also need to be defined.
2- The campaign should be launched in diversified medias including the public relations bodies, tourism propaganda ads, posters, pictures, drawings, etc. Tourism exhibitions should also be held to imbue these ideas in the minds of people.
3- Launching the campaign in a way that matters with the social, cultural and economic conditions of each Arab society.
4- Studying the international tourism markets and their traveling trends to Arab countries.
To achieve the objectives of this campaign the following steps need to be considered:
-- Giving facts that make the listener, viewer or reader feel the importance of the campaign and its direct impact on them.
-- Defining the objective of the campaign and expenses necessary to carry it out.
-- Studying the tourism market in the country where the campaign is conducted.
Thus, there should be a plan to conduct tourist marketing which will include the following:
* Realizing the desires of Arab tourists and reasons behind their preference to visit foreign countries.
* Studying countries with many outgoing tourists.
One thing to be stressed here is that media means in our Arab countries have similar features. However, the atmosphere of media and media tourism policy dominant in Arab countries have different features when compared to the content of environmental tourism campaigns and their policies in advanced countries.
These differences can be noted in the different media means, specifying its use and its technological development. The following aspects of medias to be studied:
* The kind of mass media means used by the Arab citizens and their prevalence.
* Assessment of the rate of citizens willing to deal with each means of media.
* Impact of poverty on people's possessions, including tourists, on these means.
* The distribution according to the sex, age, education, culture, and population density.
* Understand the spread of news among each region of the country.
In a nutshell, we may say that medias can play an active role in the promotion of environmental tourism in our country and our Arab land. They can enhance the awareness of the society by providing the people with new techniques, imbuing the desire to change and make handsome revenues, boosting the regional national economy.

Customs Authority has sought to improve the level of customs performance in all of the outlets of Yemen. This is to be carried out through a project funded by the United Kingdom at the cost of £1.4 million. The project is technically supported by the UNDP, UNCTAD and DFID, a delegation of which confirmed its support to make the project a success.
To modernize the Yemeni customs offices, the authorities intend to install the Automated System for Customs Data (Asycuda) with the objective of treating the customs data automatically. This will create the conducive atmosphere for the private sector to trust the tariffs' procedures and enable the customs authority to provide services and swift trade facilities.
In the Customs Authority meeting with representatives from the IMF, UNDP and UK, plans and procedures necessary to address the hurdles facing the project were reviewed.

Addressing Tariffs Problems:
Tariffs' resources indicated that Yemen's application of Asycuda will help to overcome the tariffs' problems including the weakness of customs clearance procedures, slow pace of revenue collection, difficult access to precise statistics and administrative and technical burdens on the trade community.
This trend comes within the framework of the financial reforms the Yemeni government is implementing to improve and develop customs and increase public revenues.

The system's Features:
The system is automatically operated and is carried out by the UNCTAD in more than 70 countries. It is run through programs independent from the centralized storing systems and from the administrative data. It works without the use of telecommunication network with the facility to use international trade information through agreed upon symbols.

Project Stages:
Since 1999, UNCTAD delegations started coordinating with Yemeni Customs Authority to implement the project in stages. The Authority chose three tariff outlets last year, Sana'a airport, Hodeidah port, Haradh land passageway, on the borders with Saudi Arabia.
Though steps taken last year were faced by financial problems and inefficiently qualified cadre for handling the system, preparations are still in full swing to carry out the project in the stated outlets. Later, the project will be generalized in all Yemeni customs outlets.
Specialized experts from UNCTAD, the Customs Authority and computer experts are participating in administrating the project.
Yemeni merchants have given a call for cancelling the deposit revenues collecting system in which the importer has to pay 2% of the withholding taxes of the goods in the local markets.
Therefore, carrying out Asycuda in Yemen should be associated with taking administrative measures to reform the imbalance in the revenue collecting bodies, and qualifying employees in the customs authority to be able to prepare the necessary commercial statistics more efficiently and swiftly. Above all, the different customs tariffs and restrictions of double taxation on the same product should be eliminated.

By: Dr. Alexander Bohrisch*

Governments have an economic agenda and citizens and firms have an interest to be informed regularly about governments' main goals of economic policy and performance. In fact, what governments plan and are able to implement (or are failing to realize) affect the daily lives of millions of households and the economic situation of many enterprises and their employees.
The preparation of annual reports of Governments' economic policies and performance is a common exercise in many countries and their publication and presentation usually attracts high attention in the media of the respective countries. They are regarded as the test of governments' abilities to attain their goals of economic policies which are usually: Economic growth, low inflation and low unemployment (and in the case of Yemen poverty reduction).
These reports are normally prepared by relevant ministries or other governmental units; sometimes also independent research institutes are commissioned to do the job. For example, in the United States of America there is the "Economic Report by the President" prepared by the Council of Economic Advisers while in Germany there is both a report by the Ministry of Economics and by the Council of (independent) Experts consisting of eminent economists, usually from universities. For large countries whose economic policies and performance have an important impact on the world economy, a number of international organizations such as the OECD and IMF are preparing separate country reports.
In Yemen, such a public report does not exist so that the people and the private sector are only inadequately informed about the principal objectives of the government's economic policy, and, more importantly, to which extent the government was able to achieve its economic policy objectives. If necessary such a report would also give causes why certain policy objectives could not be attained.
Hence there is a need for information.

But there is another reason for the preparation of such a report: A comprehensive monitoring of economic developments is also crucial for the successful continuation of the Economic Reform Program which is under way since 1995. This program is supported and monitored by the IMF and the World Bank but the Yemeni authorities should have a natural interest in tracking themselves regularly and in a systematic way the actual progress towards achieving the targets established and analyzing the factors to either meeting or missing them.
The main content of such an annual report would typically be as follows:

1. The Economic Agenda of the Government
2.The Performance of the Economy
• Economic Growth
• Inflation and Exchange Rate
• Employment
• Poverty Alleviation
3.Hindrances
4.Main Policy Tools
• Monetary Policy
• Fiscal Policy
• Income Policy
• Poverty Policy
5.The challenges ahead
• Population growth
• Water
• Poverty
Such an annual report could be published, for example, under the title:
"The Economic Report by the President".