AP Tourism Forum For Cut In Entry Cost To Investors In Tourism

Visakhapatnam: Welcoming the new tourism policy, president of AP Tourism Forum (APTF) and Tours and Travel Association of Andhra (TTAA) K Vijay Mohan said great job has been done by the Tourism De-partment under your Dynamic leadership Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu as per his vision for 2047. He suggested the Chief Minister make the cost of business less by ensuring speed in extending the incentives and drastically cut the cost of doing business by reducing the entry expenses.

He wanted removal of apprehension that there will be delays in incentives and sought introduction of Tradable Incentive Certificate (TIC).

"We would like to recommend the following: On ap-proval of any project the government should introduce something like TIC for part payment of the incentives receivable so that it can be paid to the local bodies for plan approval and registra-tion fees and property tax, stamp duty–100 per cent stamp duty and transfer duty paid can be deferred and adjusted against incentive payable instead of reimbursement.

"We request that there be a deferment of cost of project plan approval charges like municipal ap-provals if project is completed in the stipulated time given and can be adjusted against incentives due and the Government can pay directly to the local body instead of the entrepreneur by en-cashing the TIC On property tax, he said there should be deferment in payment of property taxes for first four years, which could be adjusted to the local body from incentives due.

Vijay Mohan said SGST paid can be given back as input every six months and input credit can be given in portal instead of reimbursement.

He observed that the tourism policy has not made any note on the bar licenses to hotels. The an-nual bar license fee for hotels should be around Rs5 to 10 lakh and tax on sales also can be col-lected by the State. "This will increase volume and revenue on sales and reduce the burden on hotels. The most important thing is this will give a big boost to MICE and destination weddings, We have been losing a potential revenue of nearly Rs500 crore annually as many are preferring to hold MICE events and destination weddings in Odisha, Telangana and other States.