Haryana to provide major chunk of hotel accommodation for Commonwealth Games 2010

According to a PIB release, after inaugurating a new hotel in Gurgaon recently, Sujit Banerjee, Secretary, Ministry of Tourism informed that the requirement of hotel accommodation in the country is estimated at 2,40,000 rooms against availability of around 90,000 rooms. He said that initiatives have been taken to bridge this gap. In the budget of 2008-09, five year tax holiday has been provided for two, three and four-star hotels coming up in destinations having UNESCO declared World Heritage Sites. In addition, in view of the Commonwealth Games-2010 tax holiday has also been extended to two, three and four-star hotels that come up before March 31, 2010 in the NCR region. Due to the efforts of the Ministry of Tourism (MoT), Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has de-linked credit for hotel projects from commercial real estate, thereby enabling hotel projects to avail credit at relaxed norms and reduced interest rates. In addition, the External Commercial Borrowing (ECB) norms have been relaxed by Ministry of Finance to solve the problem of liquidity being faced by the hotel industry due to economic slow down.