New Tourist Levy to Fund Mountain Rescue

A proposal to require all foreign tourists in Kyrgyzstan to take out an insurance policy looks very much like a way of subsidising extreme sports such as mountaineering.



According to a report for the 24.kg news agency, a number of travel agencies this week asked the Ministry for Emergency Situations to back a bill that would make it compulsory for foreign nationals holidaying in Kyrgyzstan to take out insurance and pay a levy of one US dollar for each day they stay in the country. The tourist firms want to use the money to pay for mountain rescue operations.



At the moment, there are no firms that insure foreign tourists. Local insurance companies mostly provide health cover for Kyrgyzstan nationals travelling abroad.



Dinara Zarylbekova of KyrgyzInStrakh, a travel insurance firm, said such cover could be offered to foreign tourists, but most prefer to take out policies before leaving home.



NBCentralAsia economic commentator Jyldyz Sarybaeva predicts that levying insurance fees will raise tourist industry prices, but says this will not have a major impact on tourist numbers.



“It would be better to ask how and where the money is to be spent. It could prove to be just another way of getting easy money at somebody else’s expense,” she said.



Sapar Orozbakov, director of the Centre for Economic Analysis in Bishkek, suggested that collecting the same amount of money from all tourists in effect amounts to a subsidy for those visitors who come for extreme sports.



“The cost [of rescue services] for extreme sports is enormous compared with that of other kinds of tourism. There’s immense risk and consequently a huge cost. The extra fees will be a tax on other tourists,” he said.



Orozbakov proposed instead that only those travel agencies that provide extreme sports holidays should be allowed to collect insurance fees, which could be included in the price ticket of the tour.



However, Zarylbekova said that if only travellers in the high-risk category – mountaineers, rock-climbers and trekkers – were charged, the total revenues would be too low to cover the costs of laying on emergency rescue services.



(News Briefing Central Asia draws comment and analysis from a broad range of political observers across the region.)