YEREVAN, DECEMBER 26, NOYAN TAPAN. The Ministry of Transport and Tourism of France will assist with founding a tourism school in Yerevan. The RA Minister of Trade and Economic Development Karen Chshmaritian stated this on December 26 at a press conference to summarize this year's results. According to him, steps to present Armenia as a tourism country are continuing: an agreement has been reached with the German airline Lufthansa to provide all planes of Lufthansa with brochures about Armenia. In addition, in 2007 a commercial on Armenia will be demonstrated on CNN. In January-September 2006, 272,499 international tourists visited Armenia, which exceeds by 18.3% the respective index of last year (230,390). If such growth rates continue, the number of tourists will reach 500 thousand in 2009.

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