"The fee for an entry visa to Senegal will be deleted with effect from 1 May 2015. The incidental taxes on airline tickets will be reduced from 50% to lower the price of the ticket. This is in addition to the abolition of stamp duty on airline tickets " said President Macky Sall in the announcement.
The biometric visa fee £38.00 at the entrance to Senegal had been set up in July 2013 in the name of reciprocity and then explained the government in the name of a better control of flows at borders. Airport taxes weighing on flights to or from Dakar accounted for among the highest in the continent.
Tourism sector "neglected"
According to a recent report by the World Bank on December 2014, the tourism sector has indeed been "neglected" in Senegal, while it is considered as the main foreign exchange earner of the country. If coastal erosion is pointed as one of the main causes of this growing disaffection of tourists, ticket prices and complexity of procedures for obtaining a visa were also accused of all obstacles to the revival a breathless sector hard hit by the Ebola fears at the beginning of the last tourist season.
These measures were therefore expected for several months and claimed by tourism professionals in Senegal, where the industry is going through a particularly serious crisis, with occupancy rates of hotel structures in steady decline for several years. These "incentives for the revival of the tourism sector," the Senegalese president said he wanted to form part of a broader economic development:
"Our challenge for the present and the future, is to win our economic independence by freeing us from the need for help and external dependence for all that we can produce by ourselves," he said.
The president listed the objectives: "To achieve food self-sufficiency, reduce poverty, combat unemployment, reducing inequality and to build schools.
Image: Janga Wolof
