Rio, September 17, 2003 (Agência Brasil - ABr) - The Minister of Tourism, Walfrido Mares Guia, said on Tuesday that statistics referring to violence in Brazil are overestimated by the media and that the question of security does not keep tourists from visiting the country. In his view, the violence that exists in large Brazilian cities is no greater than what exists in large urban centers in the United States and Europe, in which, however, reports of such incidents are confined to the police pages.

Mares Guia informed that Brazil received 3.8 million foreign tourists last year and expects to receive 4.2 million in 2003. The Minister said that he doesn't believe that the death of the Chinese businessman, Chan Kim Chang, allegedly a victim of torture practiced in a Rio de Janeiro penitenciary, will hurt international tourism.

The Minister participated in the seminar, "A new agenda for tourism," at which he stressed that the upgrading of services and training of professionals in this sector constitute one of the priorities of the National Tourism Plan, since statistics demonstrate that visitors to Brazil are dissatisfied with the way they are treated. "The entire world invests in the quality of services provided to tourists, and we must follow their example, since it is inadmissible that taxi-drivers wear shirts with dirty collars, while in Japan they even use white gloves," the Minister recalled. (DAS)