Jyoti Mayal, President, TAAI and Member Board – CII National Committee on Tourism and Hospitality represented Travel Trade Fraternity at the 3rd edition of DPIIT – ASCON Consultation Forum with Industry Associations’ theme “Stimulating Growth for Aatmanirbhar Bharat -Leveraging Opportunities Post Pandemic” on 9 October 2021 which was jointly organized by ASCON, CII, and supported by DPIIT, Government of India. The meeting was presided over by the Hon’ble Minister of Commerce and Industry, Shri. Piyush Goyal. 

TAAI has actively participated & submitted its inputs and supported CII’s National Tourism Councils perspective, to the Government of India. Tourism is a significant sector & contributes 9% to the GDP of our country & nearly equal in employment.

The Six key recommendations were collated into a presentation under Investments, Cost of doing business, Ease of doing business, Trade Policy, Technology & R&D & Job creation & Skills. These were put forth to Shri. Piyush Goyal, Hon’ble Minister of Commerce & Industry, Textiles, Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution during the report-back session.

Sharing some of the key recommendations by the entire committee. 

• Inclusion of Tourism in Concurrent list. The National Tourism Policy has had multiple deliberations, but a revised policy is still awaited.

• Waiver of statutory dues and licenses. ECLGS 5.0 for disbursing another 20% on outstanding loans.

• Govt. to restore SEIS to 7% for travel and 5% for hotels & to restore without legal entity wise capping of 5 crores.

• Auto-renewal of licenses without any fees for this financial year.

• Enabling investments in the industry in a time-bound manner through single-window clearances.

• Promote travel spending LTA Tax Exemption and Allow a 200 per cent weighted exemption. Need of National Tourism Fund to be created.

• An empowered Taskforce to be created with members from the Industry, Ministry of Commerce, Tourism, Environment, Shipping, Civil Aviation and Culture.

• To restart scheduled international flights in tandem with tourist visas to stimulate inbound tourism & necessary provision to be made in the new Foreign Trade Policy 2021-26 for custom duty waiver.

• Opening up tourism by starting e-visa, through Vaccine certificates & promoting India as a Safe Tourist Destination. Campaigns to attract young talent.

• Skill Development and Training in Public-Private Partnerships (PPP). Travel agents to be reskilled through certified courses. TTT courses. Endorsement/certification by Government. Rebates to be given for investments in skilling.

We believe working in tandem and a collaborated manner, emphasizing the ease of business, incentivization, effective skilling with the formation of a national task force, creating tourism fund & being included in the concurrent list is the need of the hour. And, the government needs to support & establish all these & bring corrective policies to see the growth of the Travel & Tourism sector to build a strong economically driven Atmanirbhar India, added Jyoti Mayal.