Ukraine to appoint honorary consul in Sabah
KOTA KINABALU: The Embassy of Ukraine in Malaysia is looking into appointing an an honorary consul in Sabah to help promote bilateral trade, economic, cultural and tourism ties.
Ukrainian Ambassador to Malaysia, Olexander Nechytaylo, said the honorary consul would be a local representative, usually from the business community or prominent figure, who represented another country.
“I believe once I get to know Sabah better, we shall have somebody here as the honorary consul.
“To me, the sooner we have the candidate, the better,” he said during a media session here yesterday.
Nechytaylo said the role of the honorary consul would be to help promote trade, economic, cultural and tourism ties.
“The honorary consul will help the embassy in KL and assist the business community in Sabah to get to know Ukraine and also to expose Ukraine as a big market for different products.”
Additionally, he said the honorary consul could serve as a link to assist Ukrainians in engaging local business communities and government officials for projects which they were interested to participate in.
In terms of cultural ties, Nechytaylo said he would like to bring Ukrainian folk performance groups into Sabah.
Nechytaylo was here in Sabah to attend the Malaysia Day celebration on Saturday. This year also marks 25 years of diplomatic relations between Malaysia and Ukraine.
His impression of Sabah was ‘very spacious’.
“That is something you don’t experience in other places like big cities. Nowadays the population growth is so big everywhere in the world, you really sense the issue of overpopulation.
“Here (in Sabah) gives you the sense of beautiful nature. I always wanted to get to know Sabah’s culture and its people,” he said.
He said the Sipadan Island, Tanjung Aru and beach resorts in Sabah were well-known among Ukrainians.
He said the most popular tourist destinations for Ukrainians were Turkey, Greece, Europe and Egypt, but they were now looking to travel to other places.
Nechytaylo said Malaysia, including Sabah, would be the perfect place as our country was well-connected with airlines and value for money for travellers.
To encourage Malaysians to visit Ukraine, Nechytaylo said his government had introduced visa on arrival procedure for Malaysians since April this year.
“Previously, Malaysians have to come to the (Ukrainian) Embassy in Kuala Lumpur to get their visas. Now they can get their visas when they fly into the international airport in Ukraine.”
Nechytaylo believed that it was just a matter of time to completely abolish the visa requirement in the future.
“We are now working closely with Wisma Putra on bilateral agreement for mutual abolishment of visas up to 90 days.”
He said the move would provide tourists with more flexibility to extend their itinerary to visit Ukraine.
He said Ukraine was marketing itself as part of a travel package to central and eastern Europe.
“I hope Malaysians will look at Ukraine as an attractive destination for tourism.
“Ukraine has seven Unesco heritage sites. We have mountains, ski resorts and sea shores.”
He said language would not be a problem as most of the younger generation and staff in the services sector speak English.
“The best months to go to Ukraine will be in April, May and June during spring time,” he added.
Earlier, Nechytaylo said the bilateral trade between Ukraine and Malaysia had exceeded USD300 million and was estimated to grow by approximately 10 per cent this year.
In terms of tourism, he said about 12,000 Ukrainians visited Malaysia last year and the figure was expected to grow by 30 per cent this year.