SCCI chief advocates open skies

Ravi Ladduwahetty

SAARC Chamber of Commerce and Industry Chairman Anniss Ul Huq yesterday called for an open skies policy for the South Asian region and also a liberalisation of a visa regime.

SAARC needs to adopt open sky policy in South Asia to improve air connectivity by ensuring direct flights between capitals and other major cities and giving access to private airlines in all countries to operate in the region, he told Daily News Business yesterday.

Integration of regional infrastructure through connectivity by road, rail, sea and air was required to facilitate the movement of goods, services, and people across the SAARC region.

“An efficient multimodal transport system may be implemented in a gradual and phased manner as proposed in the SAARC Regional Multimodal Transport Study,” he said. He also advocated a liberal visa regime for the region “Although the visa regime is flexible in many of the SAARC countries, still the issue remains debatable in context of sudden and abrupt change in visa policy due to the changed political scenario, he said.

“To facilitate trade through visa, we have already put forth two specific proposals at various fora, which comprise increase of visa stickers from 100 to 500 for each member state of SAARC and the issuance of five-year multiple entry visas, free from police reporting and city restriction for 500 businessmen from each of SAARC member country based on reciprocity.

He further said the Indian and Pakistani Foreign Ministers and the Indian Commerce Minister of State have endorsed the SAARC Chamber proposals and they have assured that they take up these issues at SAARC Ministerial Meetings. “We request to the Sri Lankan Government to also voice our concerns at appropriate platforms,” he said.