IATO Emphasises On Public-Private Tie-Up For Infrastructure Development

ET&T Staff - New Delhi

The need for development of infrastructure and public private partnership to sustain tourism growth was emphasised at a panel discussion of the 20th Annual Convention of the Indian Association of Tour Operators (IATO).

The participants at the discussion were Alok Sinha, principal secretary tourism, UP government, S P Singh, principal secretary, A P Tourism and Prem Subramaniam, head, Tourism Infrastructure Development Financial Corporation. Subhash Goyal, president, IATO, moderated the discussion.

Initiating the discussion, Goyal emphasised the importance of tourism as a powerful instrument to generate employment and eradicate poverty. Alok Sinha added that the central and state governments had failed in projecting the potential of tourism in the economic transformation of the country. He felt that it was mainly due to poor lobbying and hard selling of tourism as an engine of growth.

S P Singh outlined the initiatives taken by the Andhra Pradesh government and said that the recent boom in tourism had led to serious pressures on the government and the tourism professionals to join hands and strengthen the infrastructure, which he described, as a strategic component for tourism growth.

Stressing the need for public-private partnership, Singh pointed out that 95 per cent of the tourism projects in his state were in the private sector. He wanted the private sector to penetrate into unexplored areas. Tourism, he pointed out, contributed seven per cent of its share to the Gross State Product, which was likely to go up to 20 per cent by the year 2020.

Prem Subramaniam stressed upon the role of creativity and imagination in identifying and implementing the tourism projects, Referring to the 350th anniversary of the foundation of the Taj Mahal being celebrated by the UP government, he said “Such celebrations should be planned at least three to four years in advance for it to be a success. In this connection, he pointed out that the millennium celebrations in United Kingdom, a model for such events, had started almost more than seven years prior to the event.