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NTB proposes 15pc increment in new fiscal policy

Nepal Tourism Board (NTB) has proposed an increment of around 15 per cent in its annual budget for fiscal year 2013-14.

“For the new fiscal year, we have projected an increment of around 15 per cent in the total budget,” said director of NTB Aditya Baral. In fiscal year 2012-13, NTB had received a budget of Rs 600 million.

“We are collecting suggestions from the private sector to prepare our annual programmes and the budget that will be required to implement them,” said Baral.

For fiscal year 2012-13, it had approved a budget of Rs 120 million for marketing, Rs 60 million for publicity, Rs 80 million for product development, Rs 20 million for research, and remaining for other necessary programmes.

In fiscal year 2011-12, the board had a budget of Rs 380 million. NTB’s budget earlier also had a provision for consumer-to-consumer marketing.

Under consumer-to-consumer marketing, NTB had planned to restart its destination promotion programmes on CNN and BBC, and had allocated a budget of Rs 20 million for the purpose. However, Baral said that tourism promotion programmes will be more focused on regional markets that are China and India.

“This year, we are also preparing for special programmes to balance the market during the elections,” he said. NTB is also preparing to concentrate on Scandinavian countries this year.

“We have participated in sales missions in the Scandinavian countries which might bring positive response to our tourism industry,” Baral said.

According to him, Scandinavian countries — Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Norway — have a strong economy and the outbound ratio of these countries is high compared to other regions.

NTB had earlier also announced promotional campaigns for Scandinavian nations and Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) in 2013. CIS includes Armenia, Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. Data for May shows that there has been a growth of 43.6 per cent in visitor arrivals from China, which is one of the fastest growing tourist markets for the country.

source: the himalayan times,26 June 2013