The Macao Government Tourism Office (MGTO) is to train approximately 20 tourism officials from several Portuguese-speaking Countries, the bureau said on Monday. Training starts this week in Macao and the programme will run until June.

“The program aims to familiarize the foreign trainees with Macao’s tourism development and MGTO’s regular operation, in order to further [promote] exchange and mutual learning while assisting the involved countries to cultivate talent in the field of tourism,” MGTO said in a statement.

The civil servants involved are expected to join the programme on different dates. They come from Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, East Timor and Angola, according to the tourism bureau. The first batch of participants started their training on Monday.

According to the press release, between 2012 and 2015 MGTO trained a total of 73 tourism officials from Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, East Timor and Angola. The training followed memoranda of understanding on co-operation in tourism signed in the past few years by Macao and each of those countries respectively.