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Colombo, June 19
Sri Lanka will resume flights from the northern Jaffna peninsula to India subsequent month, Aviation Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva has mentioned, asserting that the transfer would help the nation’s tourism business and assist in easing the financial disaster.
The Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority plans to draw 8,00,000 vacationers throughout the remainder of the yr.
“The northern Jaffna peninsula’s Palaly airport is to resume flights to India from next month,” Aviation Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva mentioned on Saturday. However, he didn’t specify a date.
“Resuming the flights would improve tourism and help the country in the current dollar crisis,” de Silva mentioned after inspecting the airport.
The current runway can solely accommodate 75-seater flights and subsequently must be prolonged, he mentioned.
He hoped for Indian help for runway enhancements.
The airport was named the Jaffna worldwide airport in October 2019. The first worldwide flight to land there was from Chennai.
The 2019 redevelopment of the airport was funded by each Sri Lanka and India.
Earlier, India’s Alliance Air performed three weekly flights from Chennai to Palaly. However, after a authorities change in Sri Lanka in November 2019, the flight operations had been halted.
Sri Lanka is at present dealing with its worst financial disaster since Independence from Britain in 1948.
The financial disaster has prompted an acute scarcity of important gadgets like meals, drugs, cooking fuel and different gasoline, rest room paper, and even matches, with Sri Lankans being pressured to attend in strains lasting hours outdoors shops to purchase gasoline and cooking fuel.
The island nation’s financial downturn was largely blamed on the COVID-19 pandemic with the island nation’s tourism income and inward remittances waning.
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