Union Minister for Tourism, Culture, DoNER G Kishan Reddy has asked the North Eastern Council (NEC) to make efforts to promote home stays in the North East.

Reddy was in Shillong to hold a review meeting with senior NEC officers here at the secretariat complex. He suggested that an appropriate proposal to infuse credit to boost up the homes stay sector in the region could be prepared by NEC where the interest on bank loans availed by home stay owners could be borne by the government.

He further suggested that the Northeast Cultural Centre proposed at Dwaraka, New Delhi should have provision for holding exhibitions, brainstorming activities and cultural events. He, also, indicated that NEC should think about increasing its footprints throughout the region as most as the states would benefit with the advice and inputs provided by it.

Reddy advised the NEC to make adequate preparations for the upcoming Global Investors Summit, which is scheduled to be held sometime in the month of April-May, 2023. He indicated that even a parallel event could be organized by the NEC along the lines of the main event that is being done by the Ministry of DoNER where the NEC could identify a few critical sectors which are important to the region such as Tourism and Information Technology and get in touch with potential investors from Tourism stakeholders and IT hubs like Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune, invite them to attend the Summit in order to attract more investments into the North-eastern region.

Earlier, NEC Secretary K. Moses Chalai briefed the union minister on the staff position in the Council Secretariat. He said that for Northeast Council Culture Centre which has been sanctioned at Sector 13, Dwarka, contract had been awarded. The Secretary indicated that one of the important sectors which has huge potential in the NE region is the IT sector, especially with respect to Industry 4.0, including interventions such as 3D printing, Artificial intelligence etc.

Planning Advisor C.H. Kharshiing briefed about the staff structure of NEC and told that since the posts in the Secretariat were sanctioned over a period of 40 years depending upon the immediate requirement at different points of time, several posts were sanctioned in isolation with very little or no career advancement opportunities

Advisor Transport Navin Kumar briefed on the progress of the North East Road Sector Development Scheme (NERSDS), which was started in the year 2014-15 and indicated that under the Scheme, NEC had approved 29 road projects which were at various stages of implementation, including some which were completed.