Despite a record number of tourists visiting the hill resorts across Himachal Pradesh, the state run Himachal Pradesh Tourism Development Tourism Corporation (HPTDC) continues to incur heavy losses.
According to information obtained under the right to information act(RTI) by RTI activist Dev Bhattacharya it was found that the HPTDC has accumulated a loss of Rs 22.61 crore on March 2009.
Out of HPTDC’s 57 properties, 32 suffered loss in 2008-09. The state received a record of more than one crore tourists in 2009, which was 17 per cent higher than the previous year. It was found that some of the properties located in prime locations including Shimla were undergoing losses.
The most notable example is the popular twin restaurant of Ashiana & Goofa located in downtown Shimla which suffered losses of over Rs 13 lakh.
Another one in the Kangra valley underwent losses over Rs 19 lakh . The corporations’s luxury buses continued to incur further losses.The transport wing of the corporation suffered losses to the tune of Rs 85 lakh.
Despite the losses there was no proposal on the part of the state government to privatise these units.
