Tourism Satellite Account for India

With the growing recognition of tourism as a source of employment generating growth in the country, improved understanding of what tourism is, its role in the economy and its relationship to other parts of the economy is important. The Tourism Satellite Account (TSA) is a new framework recently adopted by the United Nations Statistical Commission that provides an important platform towards forging improved understanding of the structure and role of tourism in the economy. Estimates using the TSA framework have the advantage of being credible, with the methodology now widely accepted, and internationally comparable. This study presents India's pilot TSA, in the form of various tables suggested by the World Tourism Ogranization (WTO). The tables present a disaggregated picture of various components of tourism in the country, as well as explaning the method of arriving at estimates of tourism sector's role in the economy. Using the TSA methodology, tourism value added is 2.78 percent of GDP in terms of direct impact, and 5.83 percent of GDP when indirect effects are also included.. Similarly, tourism's share in total number of jobs is 4.59 percent, rising to 8.27 percent when indirect effects are also included.These estimates do not include the role of another growing segment of tourism in the country, namely (same) day tourism. The presentation in this report is divided into two parts. Since the TSA framework is new and not very widely familiar in India, the first part provides a brief introduction to the concepts and issues. In Part II, the methodology and the basic findings of the TSA for India are presented.