prijava
SARAJEVO, May 30 (FENA) - Deputy Chair of the BiH Council of Ministers and BiH Foreign Minister Bisera Turković has received a request from the BiH Foreign Trade Chamber (BiH FTC) to reconsider a visa facilitation initiative for citizens of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom and Ireland.
“We appeal to all members of the Council of Ministers of BiH to make every effort to ultimately respond positively to these initiatives. The tourism sector is one of the hardest hit sectors of the economy due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the temporary liberalization of the visa regime for citizens of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Great Britain and Ireland would contribute to increased traffic and tourism growth in BiH,” it is stated, among other things, in the letter signed by the president of FTC BiH Ahmet Egrlić.
They state that according to the official data of the FBiH Institute for Statistics on the number of nights and the number of tourists, and according to the average price of accommodation in hotels in BiH, as well as the average consumption per foreign traveler, the amount of nearly 1.4 billion KM from "incoming" tourism in BiH for 2019 and that for the same year, only on the basis of VAT, about 350 million KM was collected from tourism.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Bosnia and Herzegovina launched an initiative to facilitate the visa regime in the summer months for the mentioned countries, but the BiH Council of Ministers did not accept the initiative at its last session, the Press Service of the BiH MFA said.
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