The Andhra Pradesh government is all set to work on a new tourism policy for attracting investments worth Rs 10,000 crores by the year 2020. The Chief Minister of AP N Chandrababu Naidu held a review meeting with officials of tourism sector.
It is heard that he instructed them to finalize a new tourism policy by the end of February which would reportedly be unveiled in the temple town of Tirupati. The Chief Minister reportedly asked officials to promote AP vigorously as a "sunrise state", using this word 'sunrise' as a certain prefix for Andhra Pradesh and said that tourism should emerge as a key revenue source by 2029.
Since currently 98 million tourists visit the state annually, Naidu said that this number should grow to 172 million by the year 2020 and also added that state government would be as a facilitator by creating the right infrastructure, while tourism should be completely promoted through private investments as well as the PPP model.
The government would be permitting investments in this sector by means of a 'single desk' policy and wanted to promote "theme tourism" which includes recreational tourism, beach tourism, religious tourism, spiritual tourism, Buddhist tourism, eco tourism and heritage tourism.
