Financial boost to tourism
Sandesh Prabhudesai
18 June 2002
Tourism in Goa is expected to receive
a boost with its budgetary allocation being increased
multifold while the state also plans to accord industry
status to all the tourism-related ancillary and support
services.
In Goa, tourism has already been accorded
status of industry last year, making the prime sector
of the state more self-sustainable due to various incentives
being provided.
While presenting the annual budget, chief
minister Manohar Parrikar has given special emphasis on
tourism, increasing the outlay to Rs 21.92 crore, which
is almost five times the outlay at the end of the millennium.
Though post-11 September scenario affected
the tourism sector in the state by reducing the foreign
tourist inflow by 11 per cent, the tiny state still showed
increase of 15 per cent rise in domestic tourist inflow
last year. The overall increase was thus 8.8 per cent.
The western coastal state was actually
hit badly in terms of charter arrivals (35 per cent less),
compared to FIT foreign tourist arrivals. Against 419
charter flights with 1.17 lakh tourists the previous year,
279 charter flights landed here till April this year with
only 76,000 foreigners.
"We are thus planning to promote Goa
as an ideal and safe tourist destination, through aggressive
marketing and promotion", states N Suryanarayan, the state
tourism director.
Parrikar in his budget has now proposed
to co-opt the private sector as associates in infrastructure
development and marketing campaigns. Proposing a corpus
fund for marketing, the government would contribute double
the amount of contribution received from the private sector,
subject to a ceiling of Rs five crore.
Besides developing a proper website with
all the updates required to provide all kind of information
for a domestic and foreign tourist, the government is
also getting prepared with virtual walkthrough CD Roms,
touchscreen information kiosks and organising domestic
and international roadshows.
Besides beach tourism, the state appears
to have been actually making efforts to develop eco-tourism
by making special budgetary provision and developing interior
green spots like waterfalls, sanctuaries and lakes. It
also includes infrastructural development for adventure
tourism along the coast as well as equally magnificent
interior hilly areas.
In addition, Parrikar's budget has also
made special provision of Rs 50 crore for infrastructure
like roads and other related developmental works, keeping
requirements of tourism industry in mind. This could thus
really do away with several irritants of tourists like
transport, water shortage or power shutdowns.
Parrikar's budget also makes tourists'
stay and food much cheaper than earlier, rather than increasing
taxation to generate revenue for the tourism sector. The
luxury tax on accommodation has been reduced from 12 to
8 per cent, besides reduction of sales tax on cooked food
and non-alcoholic beverages from 10 to 8 per cent and
on LPG from 20 to 8 per cent.
"I may incur a loss of around Rs six
crore annually due to this exercise, but ultimately it
would accrue more income due to more business in more
areas", states Parrikar. He also provides figures of 21
per cent rise in luxury tax collection last year due to
such tax reduction exercise.
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