Chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy has decided to allot about 20 acres of land near the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport at Shamshabad for setting up National Culinary Institute for which the central government has offered to bear the entire expenditure of Rs 50 crore. The proposed institute will have branches at Kolkata and Noida.
Presiding over State Tourism Promotion Board’s meeting held at his camp office here Saturday, Kiran Reddy asked tourism department to speed up works on International Convention Centres at Tirupati, Visakhapatnam and Warangal or Karimnagar.
Seeing the need for aggressive marketing of tourism spots in state locally and internationally, he asked the officials to take all steps for completion of ongoing tourism projects with vast viability whereas the state is endowed with a long coastline dotted with pristine beaches, several tourist attractions and heritage monuments. The chief minister asked the finance department to release the state’s share of `5.42 crore immediately for completing the centrally-sponsored projects.
The officials informed him that 15 tourism projects, completed at an estimated cost of `63 crore, were ready for inauguration and 12 projects costing `50.61 crore were nearing completion. The central government sanctioned `58.83 crore for seven projects for 2012-13.
The government has taken up a special drive to complete all the unfinished and yet-to-begin projects during 2012-13 and already inaugurated several of them in the later part of 2012. These include Haritha Kakatiya (Rs 14 crore) at Warangal, Haritha Resort at Anantagiri, Vikarabad (Rs 6 crore), wayside amenities at Wyra, Khammam district (Rs 63 lakh), Haritha Flamingo Resort at Tada in Nellore district (Rs 1.67 crore), wayside amenities at Tallapaka in Kadapa district (Rs 1.11 crore), wayside amenities at Pemberthy in Warangal district (Rs 40 lakh).
The projects ready for inauguration are: Haritha Indur at Nizamabad, Eco Tourism Resorts at Lakhnavaram Lake in Warangal district, Haritha at Shalihundam in Srikakulam district, Singur Dam in Medak district, tourist facilities at Gandikota near Gopavaram at Idupulapaya- Mylavaram in Kadapa district, Alampur in Mahbubnagar district, Mahanandi temple in Kurnool district, beach resort at Mypadu in Nellore district, Rural Tourism Project at Kuchipudi in Krishna district.
Kiran Reddy asked officials of Shilparamam Society to speed up the work on Shilparamams at Nellore, Warangal and Vijayawada taken up at an estimated cost of Rs 20 crore and suggested establishment of a new Shilparamam in Kurnool instead of in Anantapur district where there is already a shilparamam at Puttaparthy. The chief minister also reviewed the progress of establishment of Shilparamams at Sangareddy in Medak district and at Bhadrachalam in Khammam district.