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INDONESIA’S Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs, Airlangga Hartarto said the Indonesian Government would learn from Thailand, which implemented the Vaccinated Travel Lanes (VTL) scheme to boost foreign tourist visits.
In the VTL scheme, foreign tourists who have been vaccinated against COVID-19 are free from quarantine obligations when entering Indonesia.
“Earlier, the Prime Minister of Thailand said that Thailand has made a regulatory sandbox that vaccinated travelers who go to Phuket have not been quarantined, it has been since July. Of course, this is a lesson for Indonesia because it can be seen that the number of tourists and foreign exchange generated by the people around Thailand is increasing,” said Airlangga in a virtual press conference related to the BIMP-EAGA and IMT-GT Summits which were monitored in Jakarta, Thursday (10/28).
At the Brunei Darussalam-Indonesia-Malaysia-Philippines East ASEAN Growth Area (BIMP-EAGA) and Indonesia-Malaysia-Thailand Triangle Growh (IMT-GT) Summits, member countries focused on economic recovery from the impact of COVID-19, especially in the trade and tourism sectors.
In the BIMP-EAGA region the value that can be brought in from tourists reached US$29.7 billion in 2019 but fell to US$6.2 billion in 2020 due to COVID-19. Meanwhile, at IMT-GT, the number of foreign tourists visiting could reach 40 million people before the COVID-19 pandemic and fell to only around 8.2 million in 2019.
“So that the ASEAN leaders in the two sub-regions agree that one of the things that will be encouraged is to restore the tourism corridor threshold,” he stated.
Therefore, Indonesia will try to imitate Thailand in implementing the VTL scheme which is considered a new norm that is considered to be able to encourage recovery, especially in the tourism sector. In addition, the Indonesian government will continue to implement the travel bubble in the future.
“So, the protocol regarding the travel bubble and VTL. These two things are being discussed at the ASEAN level,” he concluded. [antaranews/photo special]
