Kathmandu, April 1

In order to keep authentic data related to the tourism industry, the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation (MoCTCA) had decided to set up the tourism satellite account (TSA) in March last year.

The TSA is a standard statistical framework and tool to measure the economic impact of tourism. In course of setting up TSA, Nepal Tourism Board (NTB) has completed all the preparatory works till date with help from Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB) and Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS).

According to Kashi Raj Bhandari, senior director of NTB, collection of required documents has been completed so far. “We have compiled required data from NRB and CBS, however the data of domestic tourism is difficult to compile,” he said, adding, “As we don’t have any mechanism to keep records of domestic tourism it is troubling us.”

Thus, to collect data of domestic tourist movement and income a sampling method has to be utilised, for which, NTB has completed all preparatory works. Meanwhile, due to lack of human resources and technical expertise it has become difficult to carry on with other works related to TSA, Bhandari added. “It was not difficult to collect data of inbound and outbound tourists as we already have records of it. But we need the data of domestic tourists for which we are preparing to conduct sampling survey,” he said.

Meanwhile, the government has sought technical assistance for setting up the account from United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO). “As a member of UNWTO we have sent a letter to the world tourism body requesting for technical assistance,” he said, “The TSA is a highly technical and also a new system for Nepal so we need some experts to guide us.” The tourism ministry has said that it has been holding frequent conversations with UNWTO so the experts will be here in Nepal within a few days, as per Bhandari.

Similarly, newly appointed Tourism Secretary Mohan Krishna Sapkota has called a meeting to have discussions about TSA. Prior to this, a committee led by the former tourism secretary Krishna Prasad Devkota had been formed for the purpose. Although the late tourism minister Rabindra Adhikari had declared to complete the works of TSA within a year it is likely to take at least two years to complete the work, Bhandari said, adding, “We will conduct field visits as soon as the technical experts arrive.”

According to Bhandari, data required for the TSA needs to be derived from 17 national accounts of the country that deal with various sectors like agriculture, health, hotels and restaurants, and transportation, among others. No country has an account called tourism account among its national accounts. Hence, the tourism data has to be collected from those national accounts.

Likewise, NTB also needs human resources to conduct survey. “Now we have to delegate human resources to collect data and government has to set up tourist information centres in the border areas to collect data of tourist arrivals through land route,” he added.

The TSA compiles data of all inbound, outbound and domestic tourism. Likewise, it will measure contribution of tourism industry to national GDP, tourism’s ranking compared to other economic sectors, number of jobs created by the sector, the amount of investment in the industry, tax revenue generated by tourism industry, tourism consumption, tourism’s impact on Nepal’s balance of payments, among others.

The NTB has allocated Rs eight million for TSA.