President Joko Widodo has discussed the concept of a travel bubble or limited travel corridor for local countries in order to accelerate the economic recovery after the COVID-19 pandemic.
The information was stated by Foreign Affairs Minister Retno Marsudi when she was accompanying the president to the virtual 36th ASEAN Summit in Vietnam, which was broadcasted live by the Presidential Secretariat last month.
According to Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Mahendra Siregar, in a press briefing on Friday 17th July, this regulation is not intended for everyone but only for important government and business officials are permitted.
“In this regard, the focus of the Indonesian government’s travel corridor is not yet for tourists but prioritising official and diplomatic visits for essential businesses or business people and investors who do need a physical visit to be able to carry out their investments or to expand operations in each business,” he said.
“To meet strong health protocol standards, there is now an exchange in strength of the protocol process from Indonesia with certain countries and we are finalising these matters and hopefully we can begin to implement business essential travel corridor in the next one to two weeks. We will update more specifically with which countries,” he continued.
Earlier last month, the Indonesian Foreign Affairs Minister said that travel corridors were considered important for the acceleration of economic recovery in regional countries.
“ASEAN needs to start carefully making arrangements for the ASEAN travel corridor in a measured and gradual manner. The president has said that ASEAN leaders should assign ministers to discuss the ASEAN travel corridor,” Retno said.
Previously, the travel bubble concept has been pioneered by New Zealand and Australia. The concept regulates cross-country travel that applies only between countries that have agreements.
This corridor will facilitate traffic for residents to travel in and out of a country that is a part of the agreement, therefore independent quarantine upon arrival in the destination country wouldn’t be required.
Source: CNBC Indonesia