The 5th Republic conference held

Culture and Tourism Minister Abulfas Garayev spoke about the measures taken to improve the tourism industry. He noted that a new project of state programme was prepared, APA reports.

"As a result of the work done, the number of tourists visiting Azerbaijan in 2006 rose to 50% and reached 1 mn. But statistic information about internal tourism is very little. As I know, more than one million people use internal tourism. But the state budget has no income from it," A.Garayev said.

Culture and Tourism Ministry Tourism Department Chief Aydin Ismiyev announced that a cooperation agreement was signed with 16 countries and discussions were made in the field of relations with 22 countries. He also mentioned that hygienic norms are not observed in tourism objects and there is very little information about the tourism institutions.

Jafar Jafarov, the rector of Tourism Institute said that the main problem is the shortage of specialists and Tourism Institute and Mingachevir Tourism College were established to solve the problem. The institute trains in 3 directions: tourism management, tourism marketing and social culture.