Going forward with our post-Covid19 recovery efforts by creating green bubble travel

As a mean to go forward in our post-Covid19 recovery efforts, Sarawak will be exploring the possibility of creating green bubble travel directly with our neighbouring countries namely Singapore and Brunei via the use of vaccination passports to facilitate tourists arrivals.

Such initiatives are still in the pipeline because the devolution of powers is still under discussion with our federal counterparts and it is under the 3rd Sarawak Tourism Master Plan as it involves the federal-state negotiation on the Malaysia Agreement 1963 (MA63).

I have mentioned this to our media fraternity during our press conference held this afternoon and we are working closely with the federal government on this matter so to allow authorities at state-level to approve applications for tourism-related licensing and to issue licences such as tourist guide licences.

We are also following up closely with Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture Malaysia (MOTAC) and have sent our ideas to the Singapore High Commission. Perhaps one day we can have a special arrangement with them but at this moment, we have not officially met or sat down to discuss this matter.

Although this would be one way to expedite the recovery of the state’s tourism sector but still there is also a need to restore visitors’ confidence in travel while focusing on reviving domestic tourism. I have asserted that presently, most us are still having fear of traveling abroad and also the various travel restrictions imposed in respective countries.

As we are all aware, no one wants to open their doors for visitors at this moment. Same goes to us here in Sarawak and Malaysia. Therefore, the gradual rollout of Covid19 vaccines is expected to help restore visitors' confidence in travel, to ease travel restrictions and to slowly normalise travel by this year.

We must remember the Malaysian government is giving top priority to safeguarding the safety and well-being of the people by trying to secure a steady supply of Covid19 vaccines as soon as possible to cover more than 80 per cent of the country’s population. Of course these efforts will bring new hope for Malaysia to exit the Covid19 crisis and allow the country to gradually recover.

For our state government, we aim to complete its vaccination program by August 2021. Therefore domestic travel within Malaysia and Sarawak is expected to slowly recover in the second half of 2021. We are also anticipating for the total visitor arrival to reach 1.1 million with an estimated tourism receipts of RM2.64 billion but such estimated target will depend very much on the Covid-19 global situation as well.