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The tourism industry is a significant creator of employment opportunities. Tourism as a business encourages various other service sectors like hotels, resorts and guest house services, handicraft business and travel agencies. Travel & Tourism Economic Impact: World (2019) underlines that travel and tourism sector accounts for 10.4% of global GDP and 319 million jobs or 10% of total employment in 2018. As per the World Bank Ranking, China at 2nd position, India at 6th position, and Malaysia at 37th position are the rising nations on the global tourism front in the region. Tourism is the largest service industry in India and is widely used as an instrument of growth of national income, poverty alleviation, infrastructure development and employment generation. The present paper is an in-depth study, analyzing the visitor exports and income generation (GDP) vis-à-vis employment capacity creation by the tourism industry in India, China and Malaysia analyzed over a period of two decades (1995-2015). The findings reveal the usefulness of tourism for India as an instrument to set up the largest contributing parallel tourism economy, facilitating tourism entrepreneurship, leading to business development, especially in rural areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper empirically predicts the Return on Assets (ROA) performance of the public sector banks in India for the years 2005-06 and 2009-10. A sample of 27 banks is taken for the study. Backward stepwise regression analysis is used to study the impact of these determinants on the performance of the banks. ROA is taken as the dependent variable, while other variables like spread ratio, provisions and contingencies, non-interest income, credit-deposit ratio, operating expense ratio, investment-deposit ratio, capital adequacy ratio and non-performing assets have been controlled in the study. The results reveal that spread, credit-deposit ratio, non-performing assets, non-interest income and provision and contingencies have the capacity of predicting the profitability (measured by ROA) of public sector banks in India. The measured ROA reveals that the Indian banking sector remained relatively healthy during the current economic crisis, and the performance of the banks was not impacted negatively in a significant manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the banking sector, various electronic delivery channels are increasingly used for delivering products and services at the convenience of customers at low cost. Internet banking is one among them. Internet banking is a product of e-commerce in the field of banking and financial services. The main objectives of this paper are: (1) to understand the profile of Internet banking users in Idukki district; (2) to identify the most widely used application of Internet banking; (3) to analyze various risk dimensions in the usage of Internet banking services; and (4) to understand the influence of demographic variables on various dimensions of risk in the usage of Internet banking. It is found that most of the users are males in the age group of 20 to 40, either employed or businessmen with a monthly income of below 40,000, and educated with an average or advanced level of computer knowledge. The popular Internet banking services among the customers are checking balances, followed by inter-account transfer, payment to other account and e-ticketing. Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) revealed that items associated with financial and social risk, security and time risk, and performance risk contribute to the risk perceptions of banking customers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the details of the Employee Provident Fund (EPF) schemes in India and provides a brief account of the same in Malaysia and Sri Lanka. The EPFs in India have evolved as welfare measures for the benefit of the employees working in factories and other establishments under Part IV Directive Principles of State Policy, Article 41 of the Constitution of India. The provisions in the 'Employees' Provident Fund and Miscellaneous Provisions Act, 1952' in India are explained in detail in this paper. The Central Board of Trustees administers three schemes-EPF, EDLIS and EPS under the Act. The Second National Commission on Labor has made certain recommendations for the improvement of this Act. A comparative description of the provisions in the EPF schemes in Malaysia and Sri Lanka is also made in this paper. The author suggests that the present eligibility criteria for this social security scheme, which is now confined to the establishments having 20 or more employees and also the individual employees' wage ceiling of Rs. 6,500, is to be removed so that this scheme can also be extended to the workers in the small-scale establishments also. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]