Tourism sector demands
tax reduction
Sandesh Prabhudesai
20 July 2001
The hospitality industry of India is crying
for reduction in taxation, from 35 per cent to 10 per cent,
for want of survival.
Perhaps this is the reason why the Hotel
and Restaurant Association of western region has set "tourism
- promote or perish" as the central theme of the tenth regional
convention beginning here tomorrow.
"The time has come either to flourish with
the government help or close down the shop", says Sunder Awatramani,
the vice president of the association. He accuses the centre
as well as several state governments of not bothering to listen
to their woes.
According to him, the room occupancy has
reduced by 40 per cent in the last three years as several
other Asian countries like China, Indonesia, Thailand or Malaysia
are offering much cheaper packages than India.
"How can we compete them when we have to
pay almost 35 per cent towards taxation", asks Vasant Shetty,
the association secretary. He claims that the taxation in
China works out to only four per cent while it is not more
than 10 per cent in any country in the world.
"We do not exist in the eyes of the government",
adds Awatramani, stating that the central budget did not mention
a single word on tourism in the last three years while it
has not been granted industry status, except in Rajasthan
and Goa.
Coming down aggressively on what they term
as indifferent attitude of the authorities, they have invited
Chattisgarh chief minister Ajit Jogi, Maharashtra Deputy CM
Chagan Bhujbal, Goa chief minister Manohar Parrikar, tourism
minister of all the states as well as Atul Sinha, director
general of tourism from Delhi.
Claiming that tourism creates 89 jobs for
every Rs one million spent against 45 jobs in agriculture
and 13 jobs in manufacturing sector, Shetty also claims that
the hospitality sector could bring Rs 25,000 crore of foreign
exchange annually if India achieves targeted figure of 3.5
milling foreign tourists by 2003.
But the rate of foreign tourist arrivals
is stagnating for the last five years, adds Awatramani, while
the authorities are not at all promoting India at international
level, in comparison with rest of the Asian countries, at
state as well as central level.
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