Bangladesh Tourism Board (BTB) has proposed to Home Ministry for issuing electronic visa (e-visa) to foreigners for giving a boost to the country's highly potential but untapped tourism sector.
"Through Civil Aviation and Tourism Ministry, we have sent a letter to the Home Ministry for easing visa system as well as issuing frequent multiple entry to help us in increasing foreign tourists," Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of BTB Akhteruzzaman Khan Kabir told BSS on Sunday.
He said visa procedure is a major challenge for the country like Bangladesh to attract tourists. If the e-visa initiated, it will be a milestone for the country's tourism industry as the number of foreign tourists defiantly increased, the CEO of the national tourism organisation said.
As per the UNWTO, many countries now easing their visa procedure for further flourishing their respective tourism industry, he said, adding, recently Turkey and Sri Lanka initiated e-visa system and they have already started to get fruit of it.
Mr Kabir said presently foreign tourists face lots of inquiries when they seek multiple entry visas for Bangladesh. "We proposed to ease the multiple entry system to give the foreign tourists flexibility in their tour plans," he said.
Under the proposal of e-visa, any foreign nationals will be able to apply for Bangladesh visa by sending scan copy of their passport and paying visa fees by international credit card through Bangladesh Home Ministry's website.
Bangladesh immigration office will issue visa through a barcode after getting all clearance from foreign missions and other agencies. The foreign nationals just need to print the barcode and show it while entering into Bangladesh.
Additional Secretary (security and immigration) of Home Affairs Ministry Shafiqul Islam said they agreed with the idea of initiating e-visa in principle and have the plan to introduce it.
"We will start the work for introducing e-visa shortly, but we need some infrastructure setup for initiating the new kind of visa," he said.
Firstly, he said immigration police department needs to setup high internet connectivity with all Bangladesh missions abroad and to procure modern barcode reader machines to launch e-visa.
Wiping out any possibility of security hazard of e-visa, Mr Islam said, "We would have to introduce e-visa for attracting more foreign visitors as other countries have already started to initiate it."
Tourist arrival dropped 50 per cent in 2013, as the country passed through political violence, frequent hartals and uncertainty giving a negative image to tourists about the country. The tourist arrival in Bangladesh in 2013 was 278,780 as against 588,193 in 2012, the official sources said.
Though tourist arrival posted more than 50 per cent drop in 2013, earnings recorded over 20 per cent growth during the same year. The earnings from the tourism sector stood at US$121.5 million in 2013 compared to $100.75 million in 2012, the Bangladesh Bank source said.
The World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) has forecast that total contribution of travel and tourism sector to Bangladesh gross domestic product (GDP) will rise by 7.9 per cent in the year 2014.
"The total contribution of travel and tourism to GDP was Tk 460.3 billion (4.40 per cent of GDP) in 2013 and is forecasted to rise by 7.90 per cent in 2014 and to rise by 6.50 per cent per year to Tk 935.5 billion (4.70 per cent of GDP) in 2024," the WTTC said in its recently published Bangladesh Economic Impact Report 2014.
