Hyderabad: The state government has devised a strategic roadmap for developme-nt of the tourism sector, but the main challenges it faces are lack of funds, comprehensive data collection, low involvement of the private sector, low returns to the local economy and insufficient tourism infrastructure.
The state and central governments are not allotting the funds needed to take up tourism projects in the state the way they did in the past, but they are now keen to involve the private sector in mobilising resources for this. The Centre sanctioned Rs 406.25 crore to the AP government to ta-ke up 41 tourism proje-cts between 2008 and 2015, but released only Rs 180.73 crore, with only 15 projects seeing completion.
Investment hurdles
The AP government has identified 795 tourism projects at a total investment of more than Rs 31,699 crore across all the districts, but it cannot take them up with no funds coming in from the Centre. It has now issued about 56 provisional registration certificates to 22 companies across various themes at a total investment of Rs 814 crore and signed MoUs with 29 companies, of which 15 signatories have put in a total investment of Rs 3745 crore. It has also identified investment in Public and Private sector Partner-ship (PPP) mode projects worth about Rs 816 crore.
The roadmap envisages a short-term, medium-term and long-term strategy. In the short term, the state government will work towards realigning its tourism assets and focusing on formulating best tourism project plans. Its unique assets will be developed along with providing facilities for an increasing number of business travellers due to the surge in economic activity in the state. In the medium term, the state government will focus on building competitive advantage by installing high standard facilities. It will aim to disperse the tourism traffic from the honeypots by developing a ‘hub and spoke’ framework. It will also coordinate the use of long-range infrastructure to boost speciality projects, such as cruise tourism through jetty, ferry and cruise terminals. In the long term, the state government will work towards creating a sustainable tourism ecosystem.
A senior officer of the state government said that AP was way behind Karnataka, Kerala and Goa in attracting investments, and that it should aim to attract about 90 per cent of the required investment from the private sector to achieve its desired goals.
