Kathmandu, August 16

The government has made it mandatory for all three levels of governments to jointly invest in tourism infrastructure. Recently, the government had issued the Tourism Infrastructure Construction and Tourist Product Development Joint Project Framework 2020.

Based on this framework, the federal, provincial and local governments have to jointly invest in any tourism infrastructure development in any particular area.

According to the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation (MoCTCA), programmes can be proposed with completion deadline of three years and the investment amount for the programmes must be from Rs 10 million to Rs 300 million.

As per the framework, either the provincial or local government has to submit the proposal to MoCTCA for the infrastructure development in their respective areas.

For such projects, provincial governments and metropolitan cities will have to invest 50 per cent of the total investment cost.

Meanwhile, sub-metropolitan cities will have to chip in 40 per cent and for municipalities and rural municipalities it has been set at 30 per cent. The remaining investment will be covered by the federal government.

Under this project, stakeholders can apply for the construction of integrated mountain tourism or rural development infrastructure, parks, tourist bus stations or home stay facilities.

Proposals can also be submitted for the development of tourist villages.

Similarly, the project also covers lake conservation, renovation of religious, cultural and historical places, adventurous trails or spiritual and yoga promotional activities.

Before submitting the proposal, stakeholders must prepare project concept and masterplan or design of the project, fix investment amount, guarantee generation of jobs and also prepare a sustainability report.

The framework has also mentioned that if the concerned authority fails to complete the project on time, the issued budget for the project must be returned to the federal government. For the selection and approval of any project a committee in coordination with the tourism secretary will be formed.

A version of this article appears in e-paper on August 17, 2020, of The Himalayan Times.