E-licences to be issued for tourism industry

A guide gives information about mural paintings to a tourist in Bagan. Photo: EPAA

From July 1, the government will begin offering online registration for the tourism industry. Hotels, tour companies, guides and tourist transportation businesses can obtain an e-licence, which the Ministry of Hotels and Tourism hopes will expedite approvals and encourage prospective entrants to the fast-growing industry.

 “It will support applicants to get [a licence] faster and more easily within a short time, which is the main intention of e-government. We will try to issue tourism information cards for tourists as well,” said U Thint Thwin, director general of the ministry.

The tourism information cards would provide visitors with data about Myanmar’s tourism industry such as airline schedules, bus options and other modes of transportation, as well as a list of restaurants and other advice, he said. The ministry is still collecting data for the card.

“We are also negotiating with communications experts from MPT, Ooredoo, Telenor and Vietnam’s Viettel to provide the system electronically,” he added.

Currently, the hotels and tourism ministry issues four kinds of licences: A hotel licence costs between K200,000 (US$170) and K1.9 million, depending on the number of rooms; a tour company licence runs K400,000; a tour guide licence goes for K50,000; and a licence to provide transportation for tourists costs between K50,000 and K500,000 depending on the vehicle, according to information provided by the ministry.

Licence holders must reapply every two years, said U Myo Win Nyunt, director of the ministry.

Tour operators have reacted positively to the announcement of the e-licence scheme.

“The e-licence will reduce tax corruption and the application process will be more convenient and easy. It will increase the number of new tourism companies,” U Aung Cho Win, director of the Marcopolo Travels & Tours company, told The Myanmar Times.

In previous years, tourism entrepreneurs applying for permits have had to go to the ministry's offices in Yangon or Nay Pyi Taw, a costly and sometimes laborious hurdle, said U Zaw Win Cho, former chair of the Bagan Guide Association.

“If we can apply for a licence online, that will save time and money. We’re happy about that,” he said.

Nationwide, as of May, the hotels and tourism ministry had issued 1351 licences for hotels, 2130 for tour companies, 6309 for tour guides and 536 for tourists’ transportation vehicles.

Foreign arrivals to Myanmar have grown dramatically since the former junta ceded power in 2011. That year, the country clocked just 800,000 arrivals. Last year the number reached nearly 4.7 million, though some argue that many of those arrivals are not conventional tourists but rather businesspeople or Thais making only short trips across the two countries’ shared border.

Source : Myanmar Times

Five countries discuss single-visa scheme

In what could one day become Southeast Asia’s version of the European Union’s Schengen visa-free zone, Myanmar and four other countries are discussing the introduction of a single visa that would permit travel to all of them.

The issue was aired at a meeting in Thailand that brought together Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam and Thailand in the so-called CLMVT 2016 forum.

“We discussed travel to the five countries on a single visa. These are just initial steps toward implementation,” said Union Tourism Minister U Ohn Maung at a press conference on June 19 at Inle Lake Hotel.

U Phyo Wai Yar Zar, chair of the Myanmar Tourism Marketing Committee, who participated in the forum, told The Myanmar Times the new travel arrangement might take some time. “It may not be easy to create a single visa for five countries because even a bilateral visa takes time to arrange. There will have to be a lot of negotiation.”

He said the problem was essentially political. “If we got the single visa, people who live in the region could travel easily, which would be good for the tourism industry,” especially if the visa permitted cross-border travel overland as well as at international airports.

“Visa-free travel would make foreign trips so much easier,” he said.

Daw Sabei Aung, managing director of Nature Dreams travel and tours, said if ASEAN countries formed a single visa zone like Europe’s Schengen system, it would ease progress toward a single market, improve access to healthcare on the basis of mutual recognition of health insurance and worker security, and harmonising prices and standards in trade.

“But the existence of differing policies in countries of the region is still a weakness,” she said.

Last year, Myanmar received the Best Destination Award 2015 within the ASEAN Economic Community from Lonely Planet.

Source : Myanmar Times

Martyrs’ Mausoleum gets an upgrade

Martyrs’ Mausoleum is under renovation in Yangon on June 16. ( Kaung Htet / The Myanmar Times)

Amid hopes that President U Htin Kyaw himself might attend, ambitious preparations are going forward to mark the 69th anniversary of Martyrs’ Day on July 19, including plans to renovate Martyrs’ Mausoleum in Yangon before the ceremony. The mausoleum was built to honour the national heroes assassinated in 1947, including Bogyoke Aung San, Mahn Ba Khaing and U Razak.

U Nay Win, deputy head of the Department of Engineering (Building) of Yangon City Development Committee, told The Myanmar Times yesterday that the large-scale renovation was being carried out on the instructions of the Union government.

“We usually renovate the mausoleum before Martyrs’ Day, but this year we will undertake large-scale repairs. Architects are drawing up new designs, which we will implement pending a decision from the Union level,” he said, adding that the proposed design entailed decorating the rocks with images of the nation’s martyrs.

On June 6, Yangon Region Chief Minister U Phyo Min Thein met with YCDC committee members and chief engineers at the mausoleum to discuss the renovation plans. The government will soon set up an organising committee to decide who should be invited to the event.

U Zaw Htay, the spokesperson for the President’s Office, said no decision had been taken yet to invite the nationwide ceasefire agreement signatory groups, and it was not known whether the president himself would appear. It would be the first such appearance by a Union president.

However, the spokesperson was quoted in The Voice Daily on June 15 saying that the government intended to invite ethnic armed groups to attend the Martyrs’ Day ceremony.

The ethnic armed groups could not be reached for comment on the matter.

Last year, vice president Sai Mauk Kham attended the ceremony in Yangon, the highest-ranking official to have attended the ceremony.

Source : Myanmar Times

Western Union launches outbound money transfers

Western Union has launched outbound money transfer services this week almost four years after it first entered the country.

The global payment services firm will now allow people in Myanmar to transfer up to US$3000 a day to more than 500,000 locations around the world, through its nine local agent banks.

Customers can transfer money without opening a bank account, regional senior vice president Patricia Riingen told media on June 7.

The company works with Kanbawza Bank, CB Bank, AYA Bank, Yoma Bank, Myanmar Apex Bank, First Private Bank, Global Treasure Bank and Myanmar Oriental Bank, she said.

“Through these banks, customers can quickly transfer money to over 200 countries, to send to family members, for scholarships, health, travel or sending presents.”

Until this week, Western Union only offered inbound services, allowing overseas workers to send remittances back to Myanmar.

While convenient, Western Union services are more expensive than the hundi system, an informal exchange where an agent in one country asks their counterpart in another to pay the beneficiary, often on the same day.

The hundi system is quick, cheap, secure, unregulated and widely used by migrant workers.

Translation by Khine Thazin Han

Source : Myanmar Times

EU to start ASEAN aviation talks

Immigration officers talk beside conveyor belts at Yangon’s new international airport terminal. Photo: Aung Myin Ye Zaw / The Myanmar Times

The European Commission is planning to start negotiations with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations on an aviation agreement soon, having received a mandate from EU transport ministers earlier this week.

The EU is hoping to create new airline routes and new business opportunities for European firms through bilateral agreements with ASEAN and countries like Turkey and Qatar. The moves are part of an EU aviation strategy published in December last year.

Myanmar, meanwhile, is still in the process of adapting to a more liberalised ASEAN aviation sector, which has raised concerns about how the country’s fledgling airline industry will fare against more foreign competition.

An ASEAN-EU agreement would aim to provide more direct flights between the two blocs, and create business opportunities for airlines by reducing restrictions on access to the EU and ASEAN markets. Such an agreement would bring almost 8 billion euros (US$9 billion) in “economic benefits” during the first seven years, according to EU estimates.

The EU already has an open skies system, where any European carrier can operate a flight between any two EU countries, and has been assisting ASEAN’s efforts to create its own single aviation market. The ASEAN Air Transport Integration Project (AATIP) was launched by the EU in 2012 to help ASEAN create common regulations, safety standards and build regional institutions.

An AATIP seminar in Yangon last week was held with the aim of helping Myanmar and its airlines understand the impact of aviation liberalisation, including fifth freedom air traffic rights, and to identify barriers to competition in Myanmar.

Fifth freedom rights allow an airline to fly between two foreign countries as long as the flight originates or ends in its home country. Although the ASEAN Open Skies policy, which came into effect in 2015, allows for fifth freedom rights, they are not well defined.

Alan Tan, a professor at the National University of Singapore Law School specialising in aviation law, believes that Myanmar’s carriers, because of their current size, would not benefit as much as other larger carriers from ASEAN from fifth freedom rights in the region. But there would be net benefits to Myanmar from more tourism and foreign investment, he said.

Officials in Myanmar’s airline industry have expressed concern about competition from other ASEAN carriers, most of which are larger and more established, and often benefit from a more favourable tax regime in their home country.

Source : Myanmar Times

Myanmar’s only synagogue receives blue heritage plaque

Sammy Samuels (left), Yangon Chief Minister U Phyo Min Thein (centre) and U Thant Myint-U. Photo: Thiri Lu / The Myanmar Times

Yangon Heritage Trust awarded a commemorative blue heritage plaque to the Musmeah Yeshua Synagogue in Yangon yesterday.

The plaque was installed at the synagogue to remember the Jewish community who lived in Yangon for many generations and to recognise the diverse faiths still alive in the city today, said YHT founder U Thant Myint-U.

“The synagogue was part of a once-flourishing Jewish community in Yangon and a reminder that Yangon has always been, since its founding in the 1750s, home to people with connections across the world,” he said yesterday.

“We have dozens of religious sites, belonging to all major religions, in downtown Yangon, and this is something to be proud of and celebrated.”

The first known Jew to have lived in Myanmar was Solomon Gabirol who was a commissar in King Alaungpaya’s army, but it is very likely that Jewish links to Myanmar go much further back, perhaps to the time of the first Roman trading missions to the East nearly 2000 years ago, he said.

Musmeah Yeshua Synagogue was built in Yangon between 1893 and 1896 to replace a wooden structure from 1854. The Jewish community at that time was around 2500 but today there are only a handful of Jews native to Yangon, he added.

The Samuels family takes care of the synagogue, cemetery and what remains of the Jewish community in the city, said U Thant Myint-U.

“I am very proud and very excited for this blue plaque. It does not just show the architectural significance but also recognises the dedication of families and individuals to preserve these buildings,” said caretaker Sammy Samuels.

Monuments and buildings around the city hold the stories of all its different communities, he said.

Ma Shwe Yin Mar Oo from YHT said the organisation has chosen five more heritage buildings to receive blue plaques. Eleven buildings across the city already carry them, including City Hall, AYA Bank headquarters, the Armenian Church, the Central Fire Station, the General Post Office, Myanmar Agricultural Development Bank, the Central Press Building and the Indian Embassy.

Source: Myanmar Times