The State Government has decided that from now onwards, land for hotel projects in the Bhubaneswar municipal limits would only be allotted to reputed national and international brands for 4-Star and above categories of hotels at Industrial Policy Resolution (IPR) rates.
Accordingly, the Department of Tourism has laid down principles; and a notification in this regard has been issued, said official sources. The principles stipulate that the projects which are of 3-Star and below would not be allotted land at the IPR rate.
Convention centres in the Bhubaneswar urban limits with a minimum 3,000-person capacity would be allowed land as per the IPR rate.
To promote inbound tourism, the Government has formulated Odisha Tourism Policy, 2016, which envisages that land for tourism units would be allotted at concessional rates as per provision of IPR-2015 or as per guidelines to be fixed by the Government from time to time.
Keeping this in view, the Government has issued the fresh notification, which shall supersede all existing ones, said a departmental official.
Land allotment for tourism projects across the State including Puri, Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, Brahmapur, Sambalpur and Rourkela would be done through the IDCO as per prevailing procedure for industrial units. The IDCO shall identify and acquire suitable Government and private land parcels for tourism projects and will create a land bank.
In case of back-to-back lease of land to project proponent without infrastructure development, the IDCO may charge nominal administrative charges at 2% on the IPR rate.
In case the IDCO carries out infrastructure development on the subject land parcel, the development cost would be loaded to the land rate as is the prevailing practice for other industrial units.
The practice followed by the IDCO for allotment of land to industrial units, i.e., initially signing an ‘Agreement to Lease’ with the Project Proponent followed by ‘Lease Agreement’ on completion of the project, shall be followed for all tourism projects, said the official.