Budget 2019 expectations: RailYatri CEO Manish Rathi says FDI guidelines for travel and tourism industries should be relaxed

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman should look to relax FDI guidelines for industries such as travel, tourism and hospitality which have higher GDP contributions when she presents the Union Budget in the Parliament on July 5, believes RailYatri CEO and Co-Founder Manish Rathi. "FDI guidelines for e-commerce have been quite contentious. These guidelines should be relaxed for at-least such industries which have higher GDP contributions like travel, tourism & hospitality and they create new jobs and SME entrepreneurs," he told Zee Business Online. 

Rathi added that the government should also look to re-define restrictions on Inventory based models with possible exemptions for such industries. He said that a step like this would help these startups create more employment opportunities at ground level and help them provide right help to their SME partners. 

"RailYatri works with bus operators and restaurants across India and helps them scale up their business and adopt technology along with access to larger base of customers. Our smartbus fleet and Meal-on-Train business has such SMEs as partners. Our partners expect us to provide advance cash flows however marketplace model restricts us from doing that. India’s growth is significantly dependent on growth of SMEs and it has been globally proven that eCommerce increases SME access to larger base of customers, enabling them to more efficiently promote their services and provide new age solutions to their customer," he said. 

Rathi urged the Finance and Commerce ministries to prove special tax related sops to online platforms enabling SMEs and help such startups be a partner in policy implementation for SMEs. "These startups can also help government implement regulations and ease permit related stress being faced by SMEs," he said.

The travel and tourism industry has also been hit by the aviation crisis and another area where the government could focus on is to increase the air seat capacity as it will help attract more overseas visitors. Another thing on Sitharaman's list could be to extend the UDAN scheme to more airports and help the private sector in making it viable.