Tourists going around a flower field at Pinery, a popular tourist place in Araku, on December 7, 2024.
| Photo Credit: K.R. Deepak
Development of the tourism sector seems to be a major focussing aspect in the Visakhapatnam region under the Union Planning Ministry’s Growth Hub Programme (GHP), according to reliable sources from stakeholders of the GHP like Visakhapatnam Metropolitan Region Development Authority (VMRDA) and Greater Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation (GVMC).
Representatives of these stakeholders participated in the latest and third in-camera meeting of the National Institution for Transforming India (NITI) Aayog under the Planning Ministry held at the VMRDA office here recently.
In 2023, NITI Aayog identified four cities, Mumbai, Surat, Varanasi and Visakhapatnam, to be developed as Growth Hubs on a pilot basis.
It has organised three meetings (one in November 2023, the second in October and the third in December 2024) in the city for the Visakhapatnam Region.
Disclosing the results of the latest meeting to The Hindu (December 7) on condition of anonymity, an official who participated in the meeting said, “Our Visakhapatnam region looks promising for tourism. The promotion of Agency pockets of Araku Valley and Alluri Sitharama Raju districts was also discussed extensively and was a focus of discussion in the meetings held by the NITI Aayog team with our stakeholders. The next meeting is likely to be held in January 2025. Then the final discussion will be held in the Secretariat (Amaravati). By the end of March, 2025, NITI Aayog may issue a report of recommendations, which will be the basis for us to get funds from the State or the Union governments. The NITI Aayog report is like a Master Plan to work on the specific objective it recommends. Although the recommendations have diverse focus areas such as agriculture, tourism, manufacturing, trade, commerce and transport sectors, our geographical conditions and potential are largely on tourism.”
“Since our Visakhapatnam city is similar to Mumbai on the west coast, there was a suggestion of looking at common aspects of both the cities and include them in the plan. Tourism seems to be main focussed area,” the source added.
The latest meeting was attended by N. Yuvaraj, Secretary (industries), on behalf of Andhra Pradesh government. The stakeholders, including the Collectors of all the eight North Coastal Andhra Pradesh districts falling under the Visakhapatnam Region, attended the meeting.
The Growth Hub Programme is an initiative under the Viksit Bharat scheme to develop urban areas in a planned manner to achieve the economic goal of making India a $30 trillion economy by 2047. The programme aims to create a model for developing economic growth strategies for cities. Initially, four cities were selected for the first and pilot phase, and all cities will be covered in the subsequent phases.
The programme’s activities include a preliminary assessment of the city region’s economy, analysis to understand the region’s strengths and challenges, identifying growth drivers, setting economic goals, creating policy capacities and proposing a governance structure to evaluate proposed strategies.
Published – December 08, 2024 08:41 am IST
