Extend tax holiday for hotels to entire country: Tourism Min

New Delhi, Mar 16 (UNI) The Union Tourism Ministry has recommended extension of the five-year tax holiday for hotels in the National Capital Region (NCR) to other parts of the country to encourage creation of more accommodation to cope up with the increasing tourist flow.

The tax holiday for the NCR was announced in the Union Budget 2007-08 to attract more new hotels for the forthcoming Commonwealth Games 2010.

Tourism Minister Ambika Soni today said she had already written to the Finance Minister to extend the tax holiday benefit to the entire country.

Addressing the Members of the Consultative Committee attached to her ministry, she said her proposal was aimed at promoting domestic as well as international tourism in the country.

She said the tourism Satellite Accounting (2003-04) for India had established that tourism's contribution to GDP in the country had been 5.9 per cent while employment in tourism sector has been 41.8 million (both direct and indirect) which accounted for 8.78 per cent of the total employment in the country.

Ms Soni said the anticipated growth would have a huge impact on tourism as to its volume and sweep and, as a consequence, a much larger and superior infrastructure and manpower therefore would be needed to deliver the services.

Stating that the "Development of Human Resource in Tourism Industry" and "National Archives of India" (NAI) have been selected as subjects for discussions, the minister said while the Central Government had been making all efforts to promote tourism and preserve heritage of India, state governments would have to share the responsibility equally to supplement the efforts.

In this context, she said the state governments had to identify and develop the tourist circuits or places, give land to develop Hotel Management Institutes and properly utilise the money given under the centrally sponsored schemes.

Ms Soni said her ministry had been constantly working on schemes for employment generation through tourism and promotion of rural handicrafts so that "aam adami" should enjoy the benefits of the tourism boom.

Members wanted security and safety of the tourists, promotion of tourism-related schemes in rural areas and crash courses in human resource development to be given priority to get better results.

In this context, the minister clarified that a special programme under Capacity Building Scheme is being taken up for the ensuing commonwealth games.

Those who attended the meeting included: Ms Pratibha Singh, Mr Chander Kumar, Mr Nand Kumar Singh Chauhan, Mr B S Dangawas, Mr Parasnath Yadav, Mr Prasanna Acharya, Mr V K Thummar, Mr Shripad Yasso Naik, Mr Sunil Khan (all members from the Lok Sabha) and Dr Chandan Mitra, Mr Tarini Kanta Roy, Mr Ajay Singh Chautala, Mr Surendra Motilal Patel and Dr Barun Mukherjee (all members from the Rajya Sabha).

UNI