HAN Calls for New Craft for NAC

Hotel Association of Nepal (HAN) has urged the government to buy at least two airplanes for Nepal Airlines to make Nepal Tourism Year 2011 a successful. Reduction in parking and landing charge for airlines is also another HAN demand. A group of hoteliers led by HAN president Prasiddha Bahadur Pandey met Finance Minister Surendra Pandey here today and urged him to implement multiple VAT rates. They also urged to revise VAT rates to boost the sector. They urged the finance minister to return three per cent of VAT as the hotels are using non-VAT items like agriculture products. They also asked for exemption from income tax for hotels like other foreign exchange earners. “It will help us upgrade the standard of the industry,” HAN said

Exemption from custom duty for hotel items is another demand that HAN put before Pandey. It wants the budget to provide zero customs duty on goods purchased for upgrading hotels and other tourism sectors. “The budget should have rehabilitation programmes for the ruined tourism industry,” it said.

HAN wants no visa fee policy for the next two years to fulfil the target of Tourism Year 2011. The Ministry for Tourism and Civil Aviation (MoTCA) has set a target of one million tourists in 2011. Further, HAN requested for continuation of the provision of previous budget which gave rebate on interest if tax is submitted within prescribed time.

The new budget must reduce tax burden of hoteliers, HAN said. According to HAN, hotels are paying around 37.2 tax comprising all taxes like VAT in service tax, corporate tax and income tax. “Income tax on service tax should be abolished,” it said.