Singapore, Malaysia to work towards full resumption of air, land travel
Kuala Lumpur
SINGAPORE and Malaysia have agreed to work together towards the full resumption of air and land travel for fully-vaccinated people, said Health Minister Ong Ye Kung on Wednesday (Mar 23).
Ong, who is in Kuala Lumpur for a working visit, announced this on his Facebook page after meeting his Malaysian counterpart Khairy Jamaluddin and Director-General of Health Noor Hisham Abdullah.
"We had a fruitful and frank discussion. We agreed that Singapore and Malaysia enjoy excellent and long-standing bilateral relations. Our peoples have many linkages and ties, but they were all disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic," said Ong.
"We also agreed that the Covid-19 situation has stabilised and is improving in both countries, and we should now work towards the full resumption of air and land travel for vaccinated persons," he added, without giving further details.
Doing so, he said, would help rebuild the people-to-people connections that were disrupted by Covid-19.
In a post on Twitter, Khairy said that both sides had a "good discussion" on the pandemic situation in their respective countries.
"We agreed the situation has stabilised and we can work immediately towards the full resumption of air and land travel for fully vaccinated persons," he added.
Earlier this month, Malaysia Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob had said that Malaysia would reopen its borders to the world from Apr 1 after over 2 years of restrictions to contain the spread of Covid-19, as part of a move to transition to an endemic phase.
Prior to the borders reopening, Malaysia has implemented a Vaccinated Travel Lane (VTL) with Singapore since last November, involving both land and air routes and for a fixed quota of arrivals each day.
For the land VTL, visitors are only allowed to travel via designated bus services across the Causeway.
According to Malaysia's Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture, Singapore was Malaysia's biggest source of visitors in 2019 with 10.16 million arrivals.
However, due to the Covid-19 lockdown, visitors from Singapore to Malaysia fell sharply by 85.24 per cent to just 1.5 million in 2020.
In October last year, the tourism ministry also estimated Malaysia to lose RM165 billion (S$53 billion) in tourism expenditure for the whole of 2021, worse than the RM135 billion that was lost the year before.
