New Delhi : The New Delhi World Book Fair should be made an annual event, the organisers say as they face a financial crunch.

High rentals, sales tax and a crunch for funds - the National Book Trust (NBT), which is all set to organise the 19th edition of the New Delhi World Book Fair on Jan 30-Feb 7, is facing numerous challenges to keep up the tradition of book fairs which aim at encouraging the art of reading.

Bipan Chandra, chairman of the NBT, said, "It's unfair to impose sales tax on book fairs since last year. We have sent an appeal to the finance minister to exempt all book fairs from being taxed." "Why we are saying this is because we give heavy subsidies to publishers in book fairs. For Hindi and other Indian languages book publishers we give a 50 per cent subsidy," he added.

Chandra also said the trust is facing a crunch of funds in organising the fair. "The New Delhi World Book Fair happens once every two years despite the fact that this is probably the second or the third biggest book fair in the world. Every other major book fair - like the Beijing book fair and the Frankfurt book fair - happen every year," Chandra said.

"We have written to the human resource development ministry that the fair should be organised every year. We would need a grant of Rs.1,800-1,900 crore to make that happen - now we get much lesser than that," he added.