Relocation of Myanmar's capital of Yangon to Pyinmana would not affect the country's tourism industry operation, said sources with the Hotels and Tourism Ministry Tuesday.

Despite move of the tourism ministry office to Pyinmana among others, the information counter and the Myanmar Hotels and Tourism Services (MHTS) will remain stationed in Yangon to facilitate formality process dealing with visa arrival, visa extension and application for traveling remote areas in the country, officials said.

The tourism authorities have recently urged hoteliers and tour operators in the country to cooperate in the move, advising them to open branch offices in Pyinmana if necessary.

There are generally some four entry gates of Myanmar for world tourists -- Yangon, Mandalay, Bagan and border point. Of them, Yangon stands as the strategic one with 230,000 tourists out of 650,000 entering the country through Yangon entry gate or the Yangon International Airport in the fiscal year of 2004-05 which ended in March.

Meanwhile, export and import formalities for traders in Myanmar are also to continue to process in Yangon without requiring to be so done in Pyinmana, according to the commerce authorities, which said earlier that despite moving out of some government ministry offices from Yangon to Pyinmana, the Directorate of Trade under the ministry will remain based in Yangon as a branch of the ministry and such export and import procedures will be allowed to process as usual here without time delay.

The Myanmar government started moving its headquarters batch by batch from Nov. 6 from Yangon in the south to a 100 square-kilometer complex at Pyinmana in Mandalay division, 390 kilometers to the north, giving the reason that the shift of the government headquarters from Yangon, which had been the capital since independence in 1948, is to enable effective administration over the whole nation from the central part.

The nine ministries, which were the first batch moving out from Yangon, included those of defense, foreign affairs, home affairs, agriculture, electric power, and commerce. According to local sources, all other ministries are following suit in batches and the relocation targets to complete by the first half of next year.

Pyinmana, which also lies 300 km south of Mandalay, stands a city of district level with a local population being estimated at about 100,000. In the mountainous region with dense forest, there are three universities of agriculture, livestock and forestry.

Involving dozens of construction companies under contracts, the building of the administrative offices and living quarters for thousands of transferred civil servants as well as other infrastructures such as airfield, hospital and electric power plant at the new capital have almost been completed and expansion of the "Pyinmana special region development project" is underway.

With Pyinmana being transformed into a capital for the country's central administration, Yangon is seen as to remain as a commercial capital.

(Xinhua News Agency December 6, 2005)