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KOLKATA, Dec. 2

FEDERATION of Hotel & Restaurant Associations of India (FHRAI) has urged the State Governments to release a State-wise disinvestment list of hotels, lodges and hostels to facilitate private entrepreneurs to do their home work before offering their proposals to participate in the disinvestment process.

Talking to newspersons here, the FHRAI President, Mr S.K. Khullar, said that private entrepreneurs were aware that many State Governments were keen to disinvest their stakes in such properties. But nothing was progressing owing to lack of information. Hence, the request to release a list of such properties.He said that industry status must be accorded to hotel and restaurant sectors, and the Industrial Development and Regulation Act should be amended accordingly by the Union Government so that incentives applicable to other industries could also be availed of by hotels and restaurants.

He said the Centre should initiate action for bringing tourism in the concurrent list of the Constitution, as recommended by the National Tourism Policy 2002.

He was of the view that insurgency movements in the north-eastern States could be checked through proper development of tourism in those States. He also called for better road infrastructure to link the hilly and remote areas of tourists' interest in the region. Electricity and water must be easily available to these States. Mode of transportation and train services must be easily accessible to the tourists to reach the destinations.

Once these are on, the local youth would get into the mainstream of business and would not involve themselves in the fruitless exercises like terrorist activities. He urged the Centre to come out with a comprehensive policy to develop tourism in a big way in the north-eastern States.

He also demanded that the hotel industry be recognised as infrastructure sector so that it could get incentives under Section 80-1A and Section 10 (23G)(c)(i) of the Income-Tax Act.

Since tourism had a multiplier effect on the economy and created jobs and employment in other related sectors, apart from the direct participants like hotel and travel agents, getting infrastructure status would help the hotel sector to get loans at concessional rates from Infrastructure Finance & Development Corporation, he pointed out. This would give a boost to the much-needed expansion of hotel rooms in the country, he argued.

Pointing out that the average room occupancy of hotels in the country had been falling for the last five years, he said the average occupancy was expected to be about 45 per cent in the current fiscal as against 50 per cent in 2001-02. He blamed this on the sharp fall in the arrival of foreign tourists following the September 11 incidents in the US.

In such a situation, he felt that the Union Government should provide fiscal incentives to the hotel and tourism sectors, enabling them to withstand the present crisis.

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