GKSF would be better under Industry, says GIFT report

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Thiruvananthapuram: The running of Grand Kerala Shopping Festival should be taken out of the ambit of the Tourism Department and handed over to the Directorate of Industries and Commerce (DIC). The change of guard has been mooted in a study submitted by Gulati Institute of Finance and Taxation (GIFT) to the Tourism Department.
The Tourism Department, which had controlled GKSF for six years, has not taken kindly to the recommendations in the study.
“The study needs to be re-worked,” tourism secretary Suman Billa said.  The study argues that GKSF, because of the peculiar conditions prevailing in the state, was incapable of maturing into a tourism product like the Dubai Shopping Festival. 
“Kerala Tourism can bring in the tourists but they cannot force them to make purchases from GKSF shops,” said Dr D Narayana who headed the study.
This function has to be performed by the Directorate of Industries and Commerce. It is the DIC that sustains MSME (Micro Small or Medium Enterprise) and the traditional industrial sector in the state, units that form the major chunk of GKSF. “In short, it is the DIC and not the Tourism Department that has the policy mandate to scale up the shopping experience,” Dr Narayana said.
Taxes Department, too, plays a part. “The Department now views the trading community only as a source of revenue. It should think of some duty incentives, like they give in Dubai, to make GKSF more attractive,” Dr Narayana said.
The trade sector constitutes more than a quarter of the state’s GDP but is given no incentives. While the manufacturing sector, which forms less than 10 percent of the GSDP, are granted a slew of incentives in the form of tax breaks and power subsidies.
The CAG had recently said that GKSF has not been able to attract neither sponsors nor shoppers. More than 73 percent percent of its expenditure was met from government funds, the report said.