IMPHAL, Feb 1: Come February 19,football fans here will have the opportunity to watch a foreign soccer team to play with Manipur XI. This would be one of a rare match after a gap of more than 3 decades in the football history of Manipur.
Manipur football fans still remembers the then All Manipur Football Association(AMFA)sponsored exhibition match played between a Thailand football team and Manipur XI at the historic Mapal Kangjeibung on September 5 and 6,1979.
Thanks to the newly floated Manipur Tourism Forum(MTF)for taking up such an initiative to bring here a foreign football team for a goodwill match on February 19 as part of their tourism promotion activities.
“MTF’s aim and objective is to promote tourism and allied activities in Manipur. The upcoming goodwill match would be our first tourism promotion activity,” says MTF President Dr Th Dhabali,Managing Director of Babina Healthcare and Hospitality Industries Pvt Ltd.
With the new initiative football loving people of Manipur will have the opportunity to watch a foreign football team playing here after a gap of more than three decades. A 26 member FC Kicker team all the way from Japan will be arriving here on February 18. “MTF is sponsoring the team while AMFA will handle selection of Manipur XI and holding of the match,” says N Ibungochaubi,a key functionary of MTF. “The idea is to develop capacity building on sports tourism in the sports capital of the country.”
Manipur being the India’s gate way to South Asian(SA)countries, the MTF whose members comprises of different professional and different walks of life, felt that everyone including the state authority should prepare for the coming years where the tiny state will play a vital role as a transit point for India and South Asian countries.
The inflow of tourists are on the rise in Manipur which today has as many as 14 flights a day,in the last two years after the relaxation of Protected Area Permit(PAP)for foreigners entering Manipur since January 1,2011.
Best medium Entrepreneur Awardee from North East Dr Dhabali’s Classic Hotel here even records 1075 foreign tourists in 2010-11 against 595 in 2009-10—a sudden rise of tourist inflow, not to speak of 50 other hotels records in Imphal. Around 36,047 domestic tourists have visited the state last year against previous year’s record of 33,457 tourists.Similarly another 182 foreign tourists also visited Manipur against 140 tourists last year during the same period of time, as per Manipur Tourism department official records.
“Tourists are here not only for just sight seeing,but for other sectors such as cultural tourism,sports tourism and health tourism in particular,” feels Santosh Sekhar of the Shija Hospitals and Research Institute which has been giving treatment to patients from neighboring country Myanmar besides NE states.”The inflow of tourists will be manifold once the proposed Imphal-Mandalay bus services is introduced between Manipur and Myanmar.”