PANAJI
The State government has notified the recently approved ‘Goa Tourism Policy 2020’ which envisages a 25-year ‘master plan’ to develop and scale up tourism, quantitatively and qualitatively.
A ‘tourism board’ will be the administrative and policy decision-making nucleus under the plan responsible for strategising the promotion of Goa globally.
The new Goa tourism policy also proposes an onslaught on narco-tourism, which a corrupt system has been grappling with since tourism formally began here by accident via the ‘hippie’ culture nearly half a century ago.
The new policy notified on Friday is not the first masterplan for Goa’s tourism sector which is the single largest primary contributor to the Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP).
The process to formulate it was initiated over a decade ago during the tenure of the government of current Opposition Leader Digambar Kamat.
The task was assigned to Consultancy firm KPMG for a fee of approximately Rs 10 crore.
It comprises four modules which were submitted over a staggered time schedule spanning 5 years from 2015 to date.
It is however unclear if fundamental disruptions the industry is predicted to face post the pandemic are accounted for in the masterplan or policy.
