Published on : Thursday, June 6, 2019
Even though Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe asserts that within a month they have defeated ISIS in the country, a majority of the travel advisories issues on Sri Lanka remain in place. Countries like India, UK, Australia, France, the United States of America, Netherlands, Canada, Japan, Italy, Sweden, Singapore, Denmark, South Korea, Austria, Czech Republic, Belgium, Slovakia, and United Arab Emirates have cautioned their tourists to keep away from non-essential travel to Sri Lanka. As Russia from where a substantial number of tourists arrive in the country, still has a sever travel advisory on Sri Lanka.
As per current situation, the Minister of Finance and the Central Bank continually made declaration in terms of an introduction of a relief package. This would be a solution to the set back created due to the April 21st attacks. Amongst the range of reliefs provided, a moratorium was introduced for tourism sector institutions and individuals in the trade.
The Central Bank moratorium will be in effect until 31st March 2020 for both capital as well as interest payments approved to the tourism sector as of 18th April 2019.
Nevertheless, those who are in tourism say that the moratorium is yet to be employed.
When asked, the Governor of the Central Bank Dr. Indrajit Coomaraswamy explained that the relevant circulars have been issued to the banks and financial institutions. Also, the Governor further added that it was only two weeks before that he met with the heads of Banks and Financial Institutions.
Nonetheless, Chandana Amaradasa, Chairman of Island Leisure speaking to News1st explained that banks have not issued any guideline on how to facilitate these commitments made by the Government.
Tags: Sri Lanka Tourism