Govt. pow-wow on tourism relief package

With the UK travel advisory softening its stance on travel to Sri Lanka the French are likely to follow even as the Deputy Mayor of Paris arrived in Colombo this week to give a briefing on their efforts carried out to overcome the bombs.

Tourism Development Minister John Amaratunga confirmed that the UK travel advisory was to be softened, which happened on Thursday, and that the French were likely to follow in due course.

Deputy Mayor Jean Francois Martins had made a brief presentation to tourism officials on how Paris recovered from the bomb attacks.

He was expected to meet the President and Prime Minister as well during his twoday visit to the country, the minister said.

Meanwhile, the sub-committee appointed to look into providing a relief package to ease financial burden of the tourism industry that has fallen on hard times with a dearth of tourist arrivals were found to be wanting in obtaining the concessions offered by the government.

Government has offered a moratorium on a case- by- case basis for performing loans (both capital and interest) till March 2020, in respect of outstanding credit facilities as at April 19, 2019, as per the circular on “Concessions granted to tourism industry” of May 21issued by the Central Bank.

Also the banks were asked to convert the capital and interest falling due during the moratorium period into a term loan which shall be recovered from July 2020 onwards at a concessionary rate of interest, according to the circular.

In addition the penal interest to be charged on non-performing loans was to be waived off during the moratorium period, the statement said.

In this respect, the sub-committee met on Thursday afternoon where Minister Amaratunga discussed with Minister Eran Wickramaratne and other officials and ministers about the issues facing the industry as they were unable to receive the required concessions from the respective bank and financial institutions.

The issues were thrashed out at the meeting and it was found that various bank managers seem to take a view on their own and were found to have not adhered to the circular issued by the Central Bank.

However, one of the officials from the Hatton National Bank (HNB) had insisted that his bank had already provided relief to at least 400 cases that were related to their institution.

The minister assured that now the state banks will move faster on the said matter and that the sub- committee agreed to meet at least once a week to iron out any issues faced by the tourism industry in relation to obtaining the concessions from the government.