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Goa tourism gets Chinese attention

Special Correspondent

PANAJI: The Goa Government intends to attract Chinese tourists to the State.

Tourism Minister Wilfred de Souza, who returned from a four-day visit to Shanghai as part of an Indian trade delegation led by the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII), told presspersons here on Tuesday that Goa's stall at a tourism fair in Shanghai organised by the Government of India, attracted a lot of attention from Chinese businessmen and others.

Noting that tourism literature on Goa in Chinese distributed at the fair along with press conferences drew a lot of attention, the Minister said: "They (Chinese) showed a lot of interest in tourism trade in India in general and in Goa in particular.

We are hoping that we will get tourists from China in near future."

To a question on the rundown vessel River Princess off the Candolim-Calangute beach in North Goa, which is affecting beach tourism, he said he is awaiting a report from the National Ship Building and Research Institute, Visakapatnam to take steps in this regard.

He said three experts from the institute visited the vessel recently and inspected it.

He said the Government has served a legal notice on CrossChem, a London-based company, for he termination of contract for the company's failure to remove the vessel as per the contract signed by it with the erstwhile Government.

Money

He, however, did not know whether the company had paid money to the Government for its failure to meet the contract terms.

"That you will know from Manohar Parrikar (former Chief Minister) and Mathany Saldanha (former Tourism Minister) as they had signed the contract and not me. If you want, I can find out and tell you," he said.

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