By Kristy Dorsey
International travel is unlikely to return to anything like that prior to the pandemic until 2022 at the earliest, overseas business leaders have said.
Speaking at the latest in a series of monthly webinars run by Glasgow Chamber of Commerce, representatives from Australia, Singapore and China all noted that their borders remain either closed or tightly controlled to foreign travel. Speculating on when there might be relatively free movement to and from the UK and elsewhere, James Dunn of the British Chamber of Commerce Shanghai said he expects China will keep its border closed for at least the remainder of this year.
David Kelly, executive director of the British Chamber of Commerce Singapore, said he last saw his family in the UK in 2019 and doesn’t expect to be able to visit again until sometime next year. David McCredie, chief executive of the Australian British Chamber of Commerce, was of a similar opinion.
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“It is very, very unlikely we will see normal business travel again in 2021,” he said. “We are a little more optimistic about normal travel perhaps resuming in the first quarter of 2022.”
With a population of 5.7 million people on an island roughly the size of Anglesey, Singapore has recorded more than 59,600 cases of Covid-19, but with just 29 deaths as a result. Mr Kelly said early and strict interventions to control the virus led to a severe economic contraction in the first half of last year, with the focus now on creating jobs and training opportunities as well as a “massive emphasis” on the early detection of coronavirus infections.
In China, the government has marked small and medium-sized businesses as the key driver in getting the economy re-started. Mr Dunn said this has included granting exemptions on VAT and social insurance to employers, while local authorities have been encouraged waive levies such as the urban land use tax.
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