Tourists from the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain and Italy will continue to be exempted from visa until June 2021, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc said at a Government meeting on Thursday.

Visa will be waived for tourists coming to Viet Nam from these five countries for another three years (until June 30, 2021) after the visa waiver programme expires at the end of June this year.

When the extension expires, Viet Nam will review its unilateral visa exemption policy and re-evaluate its electronic visa pilot, the PM said. He was addressing a proposal from the HCM City Tourism Association to expand the visa exemption policy to more countries and to increase the maximum stay of foreign tourists to 30 days from the current 15.

“Extending the visa exemption is definitely something we should opt for, since at the moment, Viet Nam waives visa one-sidedly for only 24 countries – including nine ASEAN countries – while our neighbours are doing more than that,” he said.

The PM also assigned the Ministry of Public Security and Ministry of Foreign Affairs to review and report on the challenges facing electronic visa issuance and on making amendments to the Immigration Law.

Visa exemption for tourists from the five Western European countries has helped increase the number of tourists from these markets by 10.1 per cent since it was introduced in mid-2015, according to the Viet Nam Tourism Advisory Board (TAB). Although the visa fee revenues would be reduced by US$17.3 million because of the visa exemption policy, the increased number of tourists will result in some $102 million in total earnings for Viet Nam’s tourism, TAB said.

The PM’s decision to extend the visa exemption for tourists for another three years instead of one year as before shows the Government’s support for tourism development, creating favourable conditions for foreign tourists to visit Viet Nam, according to the Viet Nam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT). The number of international visitors to Viet Nam increased sharply with 5.5 million in the first four months of this year, up 29.5 per cent over the same period of last year, according to VNAT. — VNS