Tourism Development develops roadblock

Thursday March 2 2006

HYDERABAD: The State Government's plans for developing tourism related activities have hit a roadblock as only eight of the 16 new projects posed for Central Financial Assistance (CFA) have been approved by the Union Tourism Ministry during 2005-06.

The State Government submited proposals for taking up these schemes with an outlay of Rs 119 crore including Rs 39.74 crore as its share and requested the Centre to provide the remainder in the current year.

The Centre, however, gave its nod for only half of them and allocated Rs 34.22 crore as against the estimated cost of Rs 39.86 crore.

Of this, only Rs 14.99 crore has been released so far. With hardly a month left for the financial year to end, it is anybody's guess how much more can be expected from the Centre at this juncture.

The projects that have been cleared include development of tourism facilities at Singur dam (Rs 4.33 crore), second phase of the Lower Krishna Buddhist circuit (Rs 8 crore) and Araku-Vizag circuit (Rs 7.4 crore).

In fact, the preceding year (2004-05) can be termed as a good year as the Centre funded about Rs 24 crore as its share for commissioning new projects proposed during that period.

The Centre's non-committal on these projects apart, the State Government has no plans to ground them with the help of foreign direct investment as Telugu-speaking non-resident Indians made enquiries during Pravasi Bharatiya Divas held last month.

“Either they will be commissioned with the State Government's funds or with the internal accruals of the Tourism Corporation,” the officials told this website's newspaper.

Meanwhile, the State Government has submitted another set of proposals to take up activities at 10 new places and they too were posed for CFA but the Centre is yet to give its concurrence to them.

They include introduction of Southern Splendour special train on the lines of Palace on Wheels at a cost of Rs 400 crore, Eco-Tourism Center at Pulicat Lake (Rs 6.08 crore), luxury cruise on Hussain Sagar Lake (Rs 2.5 crore), development of Gandikota in Kadapa district (Rs 6 crore), development of Araku-Vizag tourism circuit;

Medak-Warangal-Karimnagar circuit and Vizag-Araku Tourism train circuit (Rs 9.25 crore, Rs 11.85 crore and Rs 10 crore respectively) and sea cruise between Visakhapatnam and Port Blair via Chennai (Rs 35 crore).