THE Ministry of Immigration and Population is predicting a windfall of tourist arrivals in 2015, ushered in by the launch of the e-visa scheme in September. This is a 67 per cent increase from total arrivals expected for this year.
Said a spokesperson from the ministry: “The e-visa is a system that’s easy to use, so we expect more tourists will visit our country in this season as well as in 2015.
“Since the launch in September, we have issued e-visas to a thousand visitors already. The number of tourists using the e-visa system is growing rapidly day-by-day and arrivals mostly come from the US, the UK, Japan, Germany, France and Italy.”
Following the launch of e-visas, Myanmar is looking to expand the scheme to more EU countries.
Htay Aung, minister of hotels and tourism, recently said that the country expects three million tourists by end-2014.
From January to August, Myanmar received 607,870 arrivals through Yangon alone.
