Akshay Kumar – Mumbai
Maharashtra Government and New South Wales(NSW) Government have announced their further plans, after the successful completion of a year of the Memorandum of Understanding(MoU) between them. The sister state MoU will focus more on tourism management this year.
Prithviraj Chavan, chief minister, Maharashtra, said, “Tourism is a very important segment for our economy. This MoU will surely help in exchange of tourists between both the states. But more than increasing tourism footfall, we would be focusing on tourism management and learn from each other.”
Better connectivity is very important for increasing tourism between the two states. Increasing the number of flights between Mumbai and Sydney was focused upon. Speaking on the connectivity of the sister states, Barry O’Farrell MP, premier, New South Wales said, “There are a lot of Air India flights between Delhi and Sydney, but I request Prithviraj Chavan to demand for more Air India flights between Mumbai and Sydney. India has always been one of our main priority for tourism.”
The MoU between Maharashtra and NSW will focus on six important clauses namely; water management, higher education and vocational education programmes, agriculture research, collaboration of the Chhatrapati Shivaji Vastu Sangrahalaya with the art gallery in NSW, apart from introducing a unique concept of exchange between young leaders from both the states to help them learn better governance.
O’Farrell stated, “Both the states have different challenges but with a same goal, that is to provide better services to the people of our respective states. This MoU is very important to learn a lot from each other, in terms of governance as well as to understand the different cultures.”
