New Delhi, Nov 23: Provender Ltd, a Mauritius-based firm promoting time-share holiday resorts, has applied to the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) for setting up a fully owned subsidiary in the country. It plans to invest $325,000 in the initial purchase of property. After the first year of operations, it plans to invest $300,000 annually in adding to its resorts.

Apart from investments in property, Provender has estimated an expenditure of $110,000 as the first year's operational and start-up cost.

Time sharing means owning a week or few weeks annually at a holiday resort. The owner of the time-share week can exchange his location and time of holiday every year, both within the country and abroad. In its application to FIPB, Provender has stated it is entering into a management-consultancy agreement with CTM Plc, a UK-based resort development company.

CTM has been involved in marketing 11 resorts so far. It is the third largest time-share company in the UK. Provender will take 10 years to build its resort chain in India. While it plans to put up resorts at various places in the country, its first one will be in Goa. The proposed resorts in the country will apply for affiliation with the Resort Condominium International (RCI), the world's largest time-share holiday-exchange club. It has over two million member families in 174 countries and 3,100 affiliated resorts in 81 countries.

Provender expects to attract domestic as well as foreign tourists to its resorts. The company expects that at least 10,000 foreign tourist groups would purchase time-share at the proposed resorts,resulting in an estimated foreign-exchange earning of $60 million. Once it gets RCI affiliation, the company hopes to increase the number of foreign tourists utilising the resorts by 2000 annually. If Provender gets FIPB nod, it is likely to meet tough competition from domestic companies. Sterling Resorts is the market leader in this hospitality area with 70,000 members and 12 operational resorts. The Mahindras, who launched Mahindra Holiday resorts last year, are bullish about their prospects in this sector.

Three major luxury hotel chains, The Taj, Oberoi and Welcome group are also exploring the market.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.