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Tourism shows mild recovery in October

For the first time in the past 13 months since the events of September 11 last year, tourism saw a mild recovery in October with an increase of 16.8 per cent over the same month last year.

However, there was a decline of 11.8 per cent in overall tourist traffic in the first ten months of this year as compared to the same period last year, when there had been a marginal increase of 1.3 per cent over the year 2000.

According to official figures, an estimated 1,829,548 tourists came into India between January and October this year as compared to 2,073,053 in 2001 and 2,045,835 in 2000. With 2,12,191 tourist arrivals in the country in October, there was an increase of 30,586 over the same month last year which had seen the arrival of 1,81,605 visitors.

But foreign exchange earnings from tourism fell for the same months by 9.7 per cent as compared to 2001 though it had gone up by 3.1 per cent over the foreign exchange earned in 2000.

The earnings of the first ten months amounted to a provisional Rs 10,559.41 crore (Rs 105.59 million) in comparison to Rs 11,698.08 crore (Rs 116.98 million) in 2001 and Rs 11,349.24 crore (Rs 113.49 million) in the year 2000. In dollar terms (varying according to the rates of the dollar), the foreign exchange earned in the ten months of 2002 shows a decline of 12.6 per cent over last year when it had fallen by 2.3 per cent over 2000.

Tourism Minister Jagmohan claimed in New Delhi last month that the country was beginning to recover from the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, December 13 attacks on the Indian Parliament and the India-Pakistan tensions. He also said domestic tourism rose by 30 per cent in the first seven months of this year.

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