OREANDA-NEWS. September 16, 2015. Green tourism is viewed among the most promising directions to develop agricultural industry and can become a powerful impetus to socio-economic development of rural areas. This was stated by Deputy Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine Volodymyr Lapa.

He stressed that, according to the data of the Ministry of Agrarian Policy, presently the number of rural residents employed in the green tourism makes up about 2.5 thousand.

"Now we are engaged in elaborating an appropriate legislative basis, which could become the platform to develop family farms and support business initiatives in rural areas. We conduct consultations with the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, which is responsible for the entrepreneurship support program, to ensure that part of the public funding is spent for rural tourism. We possess a great potential in this field and our task is to unlock it", said Volodymyr Lapa.

He stressed that with this purpose the development of family business, including green tourism, had been defined among the priorities in the Strategy of development of agrarian sector of the economy for the period till 2020, as also in the new redaction of the law on state support of farms developed by the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food.