TBM Staff - Mumbai Reacting to the just announced Union Budget 2022, FAITH has said that more direct & immediate support could have been extended.
The extension of ECLGS expansion till 2023 with additional corpus of INR 50,000 crores dedicated to hospitality & allied industries will help provide relief. Hopefully, the fine print will enable moratorium extension of all previous schemes and debt restructuring, the umbrella association said.
The announcements around PM Gati Shakti for multi modal transport, plan for seamless travel, plan for 400 new Vande Bharat, 5 planned DPR of river systems, 8 new ropeways under Parvart Mala, integrated connectivity between railways station, e- passports, PM North-East infrastructure, digital rupee, 1 lakh crore additional interest free support will have medium- to long-term growth implications for tourism growth in India.
The Union Budget provides some relief and medium to long term infrastructure measures to stressed tourism travel & hospitality industry, but there was an immediate opportunity for more direct intervention to support the highly stressed tourism travel and hospitality companies and their employees, said Nakul Anand , Chairman, FAITH.
The additional support measures could have come through the following measures
– Direct wage support to employee of tourism travel and hospitality companies till tourism revival happens.
– Abolishment of TCS on outbound travel to prevent travel expenditure shifting from Indian travel companies to offshore travel companies.
– Infrastructure status to hotels irrespective of their location or capital size to support capex growth.
– E- Visa fees waiver for all tourist visas for 2022 and beyond to support inbound revival
– Export status for tourism export earnings to support inbound revival.
– Doubled, expenditure allocation for tourism ministry to enable intensive global reach out to support inbound revival.
– Domestic income tax travel credit for Indian citizens and Indian companies to support domestic retail and domestic mice pickup.
– Global bidding fund to enable bidding support to Indian mice companies to bring global mice events to India.
– Setup of GST review committee to re-examine the tourism, travel & hospitality GST pain points
