Budget to earmark 30% of tourism revenue for local body

The Ministry of Federal Affairs and Local Development (MoFALD) has finally initiated homework to implement, through the upcoming budget program, a provision to allocate 30 percent of the revenues collected from all tourism sectors to the local bodies. Though the provision was made when the Local-Self Government Act was enforced in 1999, it has not been implemented -- except for a partial sum of mountaineering royalty paid to local government. Talking to this daily, Spokesperson of the MoFALD Dinesh Thapaliya said that the ministry has proposed 30 percent budget allocation for the local bodies in the upcoming budget on the basis of tourism revenue figures of the previous years. Some 11 districts with mountaineering tourism have had been benefitting from the provision while the districts with trekking routes and other tourism remain deprived of their share of the revenue. The ministry started to work on the proposal, considering delayed budget allocation from the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation, which makes it impossible to implement the budget within two weeks, said Thapaliya. The proposal, once incorporated in the budget program, will ensure that the local bodies will duly receive 30 percent revenue collected from the tourism sector. Trekking, sightseeing, visiting the cultural heritages and natural heritages are the other sectors from which the government collects the revenue from the tourists, besides mountaineering. Disbursement of 30 percent of the revenue collected from tourism is meant for the tourism development and enhancement of the income-generating activities in the tourism sector in the respective local areas. Nonetheless, it is not that easy to implement the provision as the revenue is collected through some six channels, including two professional associations, haphazardly. Tourism Industry Division of the MoCTCA, the Department of Immigration, Nepal Tourism Board, various authorities of the national parks are the government authorities that collect revenue while Nepal Mountaineering Association and the Trekking Agencies Association of Nepal also raise money from the tourists. In view of streamlining the revenue collection, the MoCTCA has also started paperwork to bring all the revenue collection under one-door system, said a joint-secretary at the MoCTCA, seeking annonymity. So far the government had been turning a deaf ear to the repeated appeals of locals from the tourism hubs and routes. In January this year, a group of local people from Dolpa district had come to Kathmandu and urged the then Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai to earmark a part of the revenue paid by tourists visiting Upper Dolpo, for which government collects at least US$ 500 from a single foreigner. About 500 tourists visited the region in 2011. Locals of Mustang district too had protested for two weeks in Jomsom, demanding 60 percent revenue earned from mountaineers and trekkers for the local development.