In India, about 14.5 million jobs during the first quarter of FY2020-21, 5.2 million during Q2 and 1.8 million jobs during Q3 are expected to have been lost as compared to estimated 34.8 million jobs in the pre-pandemic period of 2019-20 (Direct jobs), Minister of Tourism, Kishan Reddy informed the Lok Sabha in his reply on July 26.
The caveat here is that it is not clear if these are temporary/permanent job losses or whether these jobs were secured back. as per available data, with restrictions on international travel, foreign tourist arrivals (FTA) in the country have been severely hit.
Foreign exchange earnings too reported a 76 per cent decline from January to December 2020 as compared to the corresponding period in 2019.
As a result of the overall economic slowdown during 2020-21, tourism economy or tourism direct gross value added (TDGVA) fell 42.8 per cent in Q1; 15.5 per cent in Q2 and 1.1 per cent in Q3, the Lok Sabha reply said, based on the findings from a study–India and the Coronavirus Pandemic: Economic Losses for Households Engaged in Tourism and Policies for Recovery, conducted by the National Council of Applied Economic Research.
Further, the reply also noted that: “Due to significant drop in tourist arrivals and hence tourism expenditure, during the pandemic, it is estimated that TDGVA plummeted by as much as 93.3 per cent in Q1 of 2020-21 over its level in the same quarter of the previous year. It picked up slightly to post a fall of 79.5 per cent in Q2 and that of 64.3 percent in Q3.”
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