The government is firm to promote tourism industry with priority to the domestic sector that has registered a 75% growth rate in 2008, though the number of foreign tourists has dipped from the projected target, said Union Tourism Minister Ambika Soni on Tuesday.
While replying the questions in the Rajya Sabha, Soni said that the industry in 2008 has attained 5.56% growth in foreign tourist arrivals while the country has registered a growth rate of 14.56 per cent in the tourism sector as against the global growth rate of 6 per cent.
Explaining the reason behind the drop in number of foreign tourists, the Minister said that Mumbai terror attacks and economic meltdown in world have sternly hit the foreign tourist arrival.
She, however, said that foreign exchange earnings had rose to 14.4% last year, and this was because the industry had a high growth rate till August-September during which high-end travelers spend a lot of money coming to India.
In a move to encourage foreign tourists, the government does not provide any special convenience that would affect domestic tourism, emphasized Soni quoting that in 2008 over 560-million Indians traveled across India in comparison to 320-million of previous year.
Accepting this fact that the arrivals of foreign tourists have increased due the promotion of health tourism, the Minister said that by doing so, the government is only facilitating the usage of the country's natural strength of Unani and Ayurvedic treatment system to foreign patients, but that was not at the cost of domestic patients.
Further to promote foreign tourist arrivals, the ministry has extended its budget to assist more medical tourism service providers and facilitators for promoting health tourism in overseas markets, Soni pointed out.
And to boost domestic tourism, 139 new places have been spotted for the promotion of rural tourism while 16 mega projects have been sanctioned. A total of Rs.378-crore has been allotted for infrastructure development and capacity building.
|
|
Comments:
