ST. JOHN’S, Antigua, Sept. 10, 2014, CNS – The Gaston Browne administration is moving to make it easier for South Americans to enter this country without the need for a visa.
Speaking at a press conference here this week, Prime Minister Browne said the need for a majority of South Americans to acquire a visa to travel to Antigua and Barbuda will soon be a thing of the past.
“As a tourism country, we have taken a position that we should have a negative list which would be a much shorter list, so South America, for instance, we are trying to attract Copa Airlines here and we have literally agreed to eliminate practically all of South America from the list and China as well,” Browne said.
“Before we had a long list of countries that their nations were precluded from travelling to Antigua and Barbuda without a visa,” Browne said.
But former prime minister Baldwin Spencer said Browne’s “knee-jerk reaction” to such a serious matter is unacceptable.
“You cannot just get up and say you are going to do this and you are going to do that without thoroughly examining the implications and how you would go about dealing with a matter like that,” Spencer said.
He explained that his United Progressive Party (UPP) administration had over time been reviewing the whole question of visa restrictions with respect to certain countries.
“With respect to visa waivers it is dangerous without proper examination and proper analysis to have a carte blanche situation where you just waive visas for South American countries and even for The People’s Republic of China,” Spencer said.
Browne’s Antigua and Barbuda Labour Party (ABLP), which came to power on June 12 this year, recently took a decision to waive visas for Chinese nationals.
Browne said the aim is to make the country more attractive as a tourist destination and open the nation to fresh markets.
Spencer said the approach his administration took was to waive the visa requirement for certain categories of persons.
CNS/db/2014
