Jun. 23 – India’s Tourism Minister, Kumari Selja, will be submitting a set of proposals for industry tax breaks and exemptions to the Finance Minister, Pranab Mukherjee later this week.

The proposal includes a ten-year tax break for new hotels, service tax and excise duty exemptions and allowing hotels to be considered as infrastructure along with airports, sea ports and railways.

“I met with industry stakeholders and will be taking up their demands to the finance minister,” Mr. Selja told the Times of India.

Like the rest of the world, India’s tourism industry has not been doing well because of the global economic crisis which was further aggravated by the tourism fallout caused by the Mumbai terrorist attacks last November.

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Apr. 17 – Foreign private equity investors are looking to snap up good deals in the Indian real estate market by buying heavily discounted properties affected by the slowing economy.

Investors from the EU and Middle East are expected to invest US$400-US$500 million in distressed land deals, reports The Economic Times. Namely Spain’s Nova Capital; Germany’s SachsenFonds, Qatar-based Barwa International and Al Aqueela, UK’s Matrix Partners and Aberdean International.

“In the next six months, we will see lot of distressed real estate deals in India. Small and medium developers with turnovers in the range of Rs 50 crore-Rs 250 crore will be forced to go for distress sales to sustain themselves in the economic downturn,” said YEN Management Consultants managing director, Sunil Shirole, told The Economic Times.

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