Tourism is slowing down in the state in the past few years due to the non-existence of tourism policy in the state. The chief minister of Goa Pramod Sawant had admitted that the ongoing tourism has slowed down with stiff fall in tourist arrivals in the state. The work of tourism policy which began in 2014 is not yet resolved and how Mr Sawant wants to implement a new tourism policy from the coming season saying that the work on that is in progress.
The shutdown of mining crushed the Goa’s economy to a large extent and the only major source of income left was the tourism sector of Goa but our lawmakers failed to look into it seriously due to the lack of a vision, and now to pacify the tourism stakeholders the Chief Minister have put the card of tourism new policy from the next year.
According to the report published in the local daily Heraldo, Chief Minister Pramod Sawant on Tuesday announced that the new State Tourism Policy, which will help the government push for the systematic development of the sector, will be implemented from the next tourism season onwards, which begins in October.
Sawant had to admit that the ongoing tourism season has witnessed a slowdown in the number of tourist arrivals, Sawant also said that with the policy in place, Goa will look for new international destinations to attract tourists in the coastal State. “The policy document has been submitted to me for finalisation. We will take all the stakeholders into confidence, before finalising it,” he said.
Sawant also agreed that after the closure of mining the tourism sector was the only major source of income left in front of the state government but he failed to tell us why his government waited so long to tap that source properly.
He also agreed that the stakeholders are the one who is closely associated with the Industry and hence without their suggestions it is not possible to finalise the policy which is aimed towards the growth of the sector in the state.
The sources have revealed that the work on the policy document began in the year 2014, at that time Manohar Parrikar was the Chief Minister of Goa. But nothing seems to have happened since then.
According to the sources, the government has paid a huge sum of amount to the private consultancy agency, KPMG Advisory Services Pvt Ltd. in the year 2014 to work on the new tourism policy for Goa but till date, nothing had been come out of it.
It may be recalled that last month, a State Committee headed by Chief Secretary Parimal Rai had approved the draft tourism policy and submitted it to the government for approval.
Source: Heraldo
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