Photo by Cheng Q
Tourists who are planning to visit Myanmar will no longer need to go to the Myanmar embassy to apply for a visa starting in March.
The country’s Ministry of Hotels and Tourism is pushing for a significant liberalisation of the country’s visa regulations and is planning to introduce an electronic visa application system beginning next month.
Union Minister, U Tint San said “We are trying to introduce an e-visa system from March, that would allow international visitors to apply for a visa from anywhere via the Internet, before visiting Myanmar”.
The ministry’s efforts to roll out an e-visa system were first unveiled in January. The pilot project will start this month before it is officially launched in March.
U Tint San mentioned that the ministry is also working to attract direct international flights to airports at Bagan and Ngapali “in the near future”.
“We are also in discussions with other ministries to allow tourists to enter or exit the country at a checkpoint by either air or land,” he added.
Presently, tourists who would like to enter Myanmar by land need to face quite a number of travel restrictions. Only a handful of border crossings are open to foreigners and a regulation introduced in mid-2011 which requires tourists to enter and exit at the same checkpoint are just a few of them.
