Meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions (MICE) is another area of tourism in which India lacks in competitiveness because of lack of world class conference centre apart from Delhi’s Vigyan Bhawan, which is normally reserved for Government conferences. It is estimated that about 500 large annual conferences are held in India by domestic organisations alone. This has the potential to give India a competitive edge, as the conference centre would have assured business for a large number of days in the year. But what needs to be done is to facilitate the establishment of four or five large convention centres in the country. So far a large facility has been built in Hyderabad and another conference centre is proposed to be taken up in Dwarka in Delhi. In order to have more convention centres it would be necessary for the States to facilitate the allocation of land and for the Central Government to give such centres infrastructure status under Section 80- 1A of the Income Tax Act, so that they can have tax benefits.
