Bengal sees Rs 4000cr investment in tourism

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The West Bengal government seems to have woken up to the fact that tourism in the state cannot survive without private capital.

"We are looking at foreign investments, but with Indian collaboration," said state tourism minister Manab Mukherjee.

The state will see Rs 4000 crore worth of private investment in the next two years, said state additional tourism secretary Bijoy Chatterjee while announcing the state's new tourism policy on Friday. He said companies like EMAAR MGF and Mahindra & Mahindra were among the investors. Investments will be in the form of hotels, training institutes, resorts and tourism villages.

The new policy was formulated after suggestions from Ernst & Young and the Bengal Chamber of Commerce. The number of foreign tourists coming to Bengal grew six-fold between 1996 and 2006, from 0.18 million to around 1.1 million.

The new policy aims at a total facelift. New items such as cuisine tourism, film tourism, know-your-state tourism and highway tourism have been added to the menu of regular offers like eco-tourism, heritage tourism and adventure tourism.

The policy also talks about the possibility of creating a police wing to provide more security to tourists.

Emphasis will also be laid on budget hotels so that there are more affordable rooms for the middle- and lower-middle class.

Chatterjee also said that 35 projects were waiting for the Centre's approval. "I sincerely hope that, of these projects, the Ganga project, the Calcutta circuit tourism project and our project at Sajnekhali are approved."

The tourism department, in consultation with the land and land revenue department, the urban development department, and district authorities, will create a land bank by identifying and earmarking plots that can be made available for tourism-related projects. "Apart from promoting tourism, we will lay a lot of emphasis on generating employment, as tourism is a labour-intensive sector," said Mukherjee.