Pakistan on Friday announced plans to introduce on-arrival visas for 50 countries and e-visas for 175 countries in a bid to revive tourism in the country.
Speaking to the media in Islamabad, Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry said citizens from 50 countries would be granted visas on arrival, while 175 countries would be granted the e-visa facility, as Pakistan looks to woo visitors to witness its scenic beauty and cultural diversity.
The minister said the new initiative would prove to be a harbinger of change and become backbone of the Naya Pakistan economy. He said the cornerstones of the PTI government policy were to discourage imports, encourage exports, revive industrialization process and promote tourism in the country. He said there was great potential to earn foreign exchange through tourism as Pakistan was blessed with a lot of tourist spots and scenic beauty. He said the policy had been framed in consultations with all the departments concerned and stakeholders.
The minister said IATA-approved tour operators can now bring tourist groups to the country under the new policy which, he said, would usher in a new era of progress and prosperity in the country.
“We want to make ‘Naya Pakistan’ a heaven for tourists,” Chaudhry said.
Business visas will now be provided to citizens of 96 countries, an increase from the previous 68 countries. The business visas will be stamped in eight to ten days, he said.
Chaudhry said the duration of diplomatic visas has been extended from one year to three years, while that of students’ visas to two years from one year.
Tourists can now visit all parts of the country, including open cantonments, Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan. They are no longer required to obtain any NOC, the minister added.
He said that journalist visas would now be processed through the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, and they would also be given long-term visas without any curbs.
The information minister said the government was also contemplating to revive the major festivals across the country to provide entertainment to the masses and further build the soft image of the country. He said the government wanted to make tourism the basis of development like Malaysia and Turkey which were earning billions of dollars from this sector.
Later, responding to the question of media persons, he asked the opposition to play its part to run the parliamentary proceedings in a smooth manner as running the House was joint responsibility of the treasury and opposition benches.
The minister said the PML-N leader Shehbaz Sharif, who had introduced the culture of extrajudicial killings during his tenures as Punjab chief minister, was now criticizing the PTI government on the Sahiwal incident, which unlike Model Town tragedy was not a pre-planned killing.
Rejecting the recent statements of Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) leaders Asif Ali Zardari and Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah that the system and the state were in danger, he said political careers of some PPP leaders were at stake who had been caught red-handed in mega money laundering and corruption cases.
It might be mentioned that Forbes magazine had included Pakistan in a list of 10 coolest places to go to in 2019.
Pakistan was last a prominent tourist destination in the 1970s when the “hippie trail” brought Western travellers through the apricot and walnut orchards of the Swat Valley and Kashmir on their way to India and Nepal.
Since then, deteriorating security had chipped away at the number of visitors. But security has since improved dramatically in recent years, with militant attacks down sharply in the country.
Published in Daily Times, January 26th 2019.
