KATHMANDU, MARCH 4
Encouraged by rising vaccination rates and the dominant Omicron variant of the coronavirus not causing severe health complications, many countries have eased their travel rules in a bid to revive their COVID-battered tourism sector and the economy in general. Against this backdrop, the private sector has been demanding the government to also attract more number of tourists by relaxing some stringent criteria still in place for international travel.
On Thursday, the Confederation of Nepalese Industries (CNI) held a meeting with the Revenue Committee to discuss initiatives to revive the country's tourism sector. "The first and foremost that needs to be done is remove the mandatory provision for PCR report for all international travellers," said Vice-President of CNI Raj Bahadur Shah, adding the government should accept vaccination report as the only required document to travel freely for fully vaccinated travellers.
Along with bringing the under-construction Gautam Buddha International Airport and Pokhara international airport into operation on time, he opined the government should also focus on infrastructure development of tourist destinations in Nepal.
Despite relaxing certain restrictions, which has helped the life in general to return to normalcy in the country, the regulations in place for international travel are still too stringent, stakeholders allege.
Among others, international travellers to Nepal are required to present COVID-19 negative report obtained within 72 hours of departure from the first port of embarkation and a printed copy of International Traveller Online Arrival Form obtained after online registration in COV- ID-19 Crisis Management Centre (CCMC) website.
The COVID-19 rules for international travellers here is, in fact, stricter than in neighbouring India, which has allowed passengers from 82 countries including Nepal to only show the proof of vaccination against the COV- ID-19 to be able to travel freely without staying in a week-long quarantine. Such travellers have to undergo a PCR test on eighth day of arrival.
Hence, the Tourism Revitalisation Steering Committee also recently requested the CCMC to simplify and amend the travel criteria put in place by the government for inbound and outbound passengers.
According to Binayak Shah, senior vice-president of Hotel Association Nepal, the pace of revival of the tourism industry depends on cooperation and coordination between all the concerned stakeholders. "Unfortunately our country is mired in politics and power play instead of post-pandemic economic recovery," he said, adding the government should bring a national policy related to recovery of the tourism sector.
He also claimed the government's promises usually turn out to be empty words. "One prime example is the '10-day holiday package for civil servants' announced by the government in the annual budget speech. But seven months into the fiscal year, the scheme has just been limited to the paper."
CNI Vice-President Shah, meanwhile, informed that the confederation has also requested the Revenue Committee to extend the subsidised loan scheme introduced by the government in current fiscal year budget by at least one year.
Nepal's tourist arrivals stood at less than 151,000 last year, which was only a sliver of nearly 1.20 million tourists that the country had welcomed in 2019, before the pandemic hobbled the global tourism.
According to World Travel and Tourism Council, the tourism industry in Nepal directly created the over a million jobs and generated Rs 247.5 billion in 2019, which was equivalent of 6.7 per cent of the country's economy. The total contribution of travel and tourism to the GDP nearly halved to 3.6 per cent in 2020.
A version of this article appears in the print on March 5, 2022, of The Himalayan Times.
