State governments have listed over 700 tourism projects, requiring investments of over Rs 50,000 crore for domestic and overseas investors participating in the first tourism investors’ summit starting in the capital on Wednesday.
In addition to highlighting India as a tourism hub, the government is now trying to position the country as an attractive destination for investments in the sector.
“We have been promoting India on the demand side. There has been little focus on the supply side. Keeping in view the enabling environment in the country, we decided to launch this initiative on the supply side. States have prepared a list of over 700 investible projects. If all these fructify, the total investment will be more than Rs 50,000 crore,” said Vinod Zutshi, secretary, tourism ministry.
The three-day Incredible India Tourism Investors’ Summit is being organised by the Union tourism ministry along with CII.
He said states had got Yes Bank, KPMG, E&Y and others as knowledge partners to identify and list the projects in detail. These projects are diversified and include hotels, convention centres, amusement parks, ropeways and so on.
Highlighting the importance of attracting investments from domestic and overseas investors, Zutshi said the tourism ministry has decided to set up an investment desk in the ministry to facilitate and monitor investments.
“There is a need for 200,000 hotel rooms in the country to cater to the rising number of business and leisure visitors,” said Zutshi.
States have identified land parcels on which these 700 projects could come up.
The tourism ministry held a series of domestic and international road shows in the run up to this summit. Road shows were held in various overseas locations in US, London, Japan, China, Singapore and Dubai, etc. A total of 70-80 international delegates/investors are expected to participate. Over 200 domestic delegates and investors have registered. The number of total participants is expected to exceed 2,000 including the exhibitors and various officials from state governments. Zutshi said the investors' summit will become a regular annual feature. "We want to act as a facilitator and handhold the states in securing investments," he said.
