Events

MINSK, 22 May (BelTA) – The Embassy of Italy in Belarus is introducing facilitated visa procedures, the Embassy’s press service told BelTA.

First Secretary of the Embassy of Italy in Minsk Ugo Boni noted: “We would like to facilitate the visa application process and to allow everyone willing to visit Italy as a tourist to reduce their expenses”.

“Intent on improving the quality of rendered services, we primarily cater to wishes of our clients with regard to one-year visas, simpler requirements for documents and additional working hours for residents of the regions,” stressed Ugo Boni.

He pointed out that the Embassy closely cooperates with travel agencies. “Since the number of our partners in this sphere has doubled, we have introduced special working hours specifically to cater for them. We have also considerably increased the number of personnel who work with travel agencies. It allows processing applications faster and more effectively. Even tourists willing to catch last minute deals can get our visas in time,” noted the First Secretary of the Embassy.

Ugo Boni underlined that tourism business is particularly important for the Italian economy. Belarus is also important as a country with a great tourism potential. In his opinion, it is testified by the attention that Italian travel agencies have started paying to Belarus.

In the last 12 months the Embassy has taken a number of measures to improve and expand the range of services available to Belarusian citizens. Online queuing for submitting visa application documents is available as from October 2013. The system is available 24/7 and can considerably reduce the time people spend in queues as they wait for their time to submit documents. Representatives of the Embassy noted that the waiting time used to be as large as two months in previous years at the height of tourism seasons (from April through August), nowadays the waiting time does not exceed ten days.

Novelties have been introduced with regard to the list of documents needed to get a visa. The Embassy of Italy in association with the diplomatic missions of Schengen zone countries that operate in Belarus has reached a principal agreement concerning the documents submitted as part of the visa application process. The agreement clearly specifies the documents and facilitates the procedure for getting Italian visas, in particular, those for underage citizens.

The Embassy of Italy drew attention to the fact that Belarusian tourists can now submit copies of their documents in Russian or Belarusian since originals are no longer needed as well as their translation into Italian.

A number of measures have been taken to facilitate visa applications for Belarusian citizens, who live outside Minsk. For a fee passports with visas can be delivered to the applicant’s doorstep. Apart from that, the Embassy can now receive documents from residents of the regions in the afternoon since those residents often have to travel at night in order to submit their applications in the morning batch.