KATHMANDU, JAN 07 - Asian Development Bank (ADB) has approved technical grant assistance of US $450 thousand to develop a tourism development plan for 2004 to 2014 for the four countries belonging to the South Asia Sub-regional Economic Co-operation (SASEC).
The plan would help promote economic growth and reduce rural poverty in the four members of SASEC including Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan and India, states a press release issued here today.
ADB is the executing agency for the TA, working on behalf of the SASEC Tourism Working Group (TWG) and it would be carried out over six months to June 2004.
The bank has further stated that the framework program and project concepts of the plan would be developed in an involvement of public and private sector and other stakeholders related to the industry.
National workshops would be held later in each of the countries, according to the release.
The SASEC was established in 2001 with the ADB support and the bank has identified tourism development as an area of priority in promoting economic co-operation in the sub-region.
"ADB has an experience that illustrated tourism has great potential as a sector for sub-regional co-operation," says the release quoting Snimer Sahni, Senior Project Economist of the bank.
The release further states that the TWG has identified that the sub-regional tourism master plan should revolve around the common themes of ‘Eco-tourism’ and ‘Buddhist Circuits’.
The four countries of SASEC receive more than three million international visitors, which generates combined revenues of US$3.5 billion in 2000.Posted on: 2004-01-08 03:16

Post Your Comment

Please note that all the fields marked * are mandatory.

* Full Name

* Address

* Email Address

* Comment
[Some of the HTML tags you can use : <b>, <i>, <a>]

* Captcha

Get another CAPTCHA code