BHUBANESWAR: The extension of Emergency Credit Line Guarantee Scheme (ECLGS) by Rs 50,000 crore till March 2023 for the tourism and hospitality sector is not something that the stakeholders in Odisha were looking forward to. Instead, they wished for incentives and soft loans for the industry that has been stifled by the two waves of the Covid-19 pandemic and is yet to completely recover.
The ECLGS was launched by the Centre as a special scheme in wake of the Covid-19 crisis to extend emergency credit facilities to business enterprises and MSMEs to meet their additional term loan and working capital requirements.
Chairman of Hotel and Restaurant Association of Odisha JK Mohanty welcomed the sanction of Rs 50,000 crore for the hotel industry as ECLGS loan to tide over the liquidity crisis in the hospitality sector due to the pandemic. He, however, said that this is yet another loan which cannot be considered a relief.
“The moratorium period of one more year which has been extended till March 2023 is not adequate and needs to be extended up to March 2025 to overcome the loss which the industry has already incurred in last two years,” said Mohanty, also the chairman of Indian Association of Tour Operators (IATO) eastern region.
The marginal rise in the budget allocation for the Tourism Ministry from Rs 2,026 crore to Rs 2,400 crore is not adequate at all to promote a large country such as India, he said and hoped that the eight ropeway projects announced in the budget includes Odisha.
Director of The Crown hotel Debasish Patnaik said the ECLGS extension is yet another loan burden and not a solution. Soft loans were the need of the hour to revive the sector and bring it to pre-Covid situation.
Managing Director of Sand and Pebbles, Alok Maharana said that more than 20 travel and tour operators in the State have closed their shops in the last two years. “How will they repay the ECLGS loan when the market is yet to revive completely and business is at an all-time low?”, he asked.
As per a report of the State Tourism department, international tourist arrivals to Odisha had dropped by 99 per cent in 2021-22 and domestic tourists by 84 per cent.