Kathmandu, April 10

The main organising committee of the Visit Nepal Year (VNY) 2020 campaign has endorsed the budget allocated for campaign today.

The main organising committee meeting led by Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli has approved the budget of Rs 100 million allocated by the government for this fiscal year. After the VNY committee submitted programmes and plans for the campaign, the third meeting of the committee endorsed the budget.

As per a decision taken by the committee, campaign coordinator Suraj Vaidya will have 10 per cent authority and the programme implementing committee will have 15 per cent authority to mobilise the budget.

As PM Oli, who is also chairperson of the main organising committee, will not have enough time to attend meetings, the authority to mobilise the aforementioned 25 per cent budget has been handed over to Vaidya and the programme implementing committee.

Likewise, the meeting has taken a decision to use the VNY 2020 logo and slogan on every government website and also on letterheads of public offices.

Focusing on the effective implementation of the campaign, the committee has decided to distribute plans and programmes to the provincial and local governments too.

Meanwhile, the committee has announced it will conduct a soft launch of the campaign on April 13 from Pokhara. The main organising committee comprises 50 members, including the prime minister, representatives from the tourism ministry, Nepal Tourism Board, chief ministers and tourism ministers of all seven provinces as well as representatives from tourism organisations such as Hotel Association Nepal, Trekking Agencies’ Association Nepal and Nepal Association of Tour and Travel Agents. The committee will have to spend the entire budget within three months.

However, there is still a lot of work left to be done for the VNY 2020 campaign.

The campaign is still to set up its secretariat and after that, it will have to manage human resources, conduct promotional campaigns, build infrastructure, promote destinations, write itineraries and start digital marketing. To make things worse, the campaign still has not finalised the 20 destinations as per the campaign motto.

The government had announced VNY 2020 targeting to bring two million tourists by 2020, for which the government along with the private sector is conducting several promotional activities inside and outside the country with the slogan ‘Lifetime experience’.