AGARTALA, August 18 (TIWN): In popularising the historical places of the northeastern states of Tripura known to be a land locked state, the government has a plan to build a tourist circuit to offer cooperation between the North Eastern region and the neighbouring Bangladesh along with the South East Asian countries. “There is huge potential for sub-regional cooperation between India’s North-East, Bangladesh and SE Asia”, said Chief Minister Manik Sarkar on Monday.

Sarkar was addressing the inauguration programme of separate directorate office building at Swet Mahal for the state tourism department.

“It is time that we can think of a tourist circuit encompassing the three countries or the regions and popularise the historical places in Tripura so that a better relation among the people of the region could be developed,” Sarkar said.

He said that the state need to boost tourism between our north eastern region and Bangladesh because the people of the two countries have lingual and cultural affinity.

“The government has taken up several initiatives to upgrade the state’s historical placess to attract tourists from abroad,” adding Sarkar said that yet today the tourism sector of the state is in its first stage but has a chance to get well developed.

The upgradation work of the tourism would also boost the overall development of the state and along with the financial infrastructure would find a possibility to get accelerated.

According to the government records released on Monday during the programme, state has received a total of 3, 90, 667 tourists during the Financial Year (FY) of 2014-15 amongst whom 29, 086 are foreign and the rest 3, 61, 581 are domestic.

During 2014-15 FY the government had earned total revenue of Rs. 203.47 lakhs from the tourists’ lodges, cafeteria and package tours whereas a total of 3, 75, 371 domestic and foreign tourists had visited the state during the FY of 2013-14.