Post-COVID, necessary for neighbours to work together: Bhutan FM on China-Bhutan Boundary talks

As Bhutan prepares to reopen borders in September this year, interview to The Hindu on new tourism policy, vaccines and boundary resolution with China

It is important to learn the lessons of the pandemic, says Bhutan’s Foreign Minister Tandi Dorji, explaining Bhutan’s new higher tariff tourism policy as well as the country’s moves to resolve its boundaries with China. In the first interview since the China-Bhutan breakthrough on a 3-step mechanism to discuss boundary issues last year, Mr. Dorji tells The Hindu that Bhutan will ensure India’s interests on the Doklam tri-junction will not be harmed.

Bhutan is a very small country, we have a little over 7,00,000 people. When the pandemic first began in March of 2020, we were guided by His Majesty the King, and whose command was that we should prevent even one death from occuring. The loss of one life would be a very sad thing. And that was what the government intended to do. So right from the beginning, our response has been to save each and every life, and the decision was taken to close the border. Even as we speak today, the pandemic is still not over. It is raging in many countries, although the severity has reduced, but the numbers of infections keep occurring in phases. What we really wanted was to have all the entire population vaccinated as early as possible so that once their lives are secure, then we could go forward. So we kept everything aside, including the economy, and we focused entirely on the health response and saving Bhutanese lives. The country is now entirely vaccinated, and very soon, children below five years who are willing, will be vaccinated with the recent receipt of the [33,600 doses of Moderna MRNA] vaccines from the US.

We have always followed an evidence based decision making process, studying how severe the virus was, what is the impact on the mortality, how effective are the vaccines, etc. And so based on all this, now that we have secured a very high level of vaccination, we know that the Omicron variant is not so severe. The people who have been infected have all recovered, we’ve had in all about 21 deaths in these two years. And so now we felt that we are prepared to open up the borders. Under the visionary leadership of His Majesty the King we have achieved this and I’m quite proud to say that I think we have shown an example on how we can manage COVID effectively as compared to many countries around the world. Currently we have a requirement of 24 hours quarantine while your test results come and formally we’ll be opening up the doors for tourism on September 23.

Firstly, I would like to thank the Government of India for the valuable support offered to us, not only in terms of vaccines, but in terms of the support for medicines, essential equipments, ventilators, Xray machines. Of course, we were also acutely aware of the urgency in India last year [during the Delta outbreak] and how much the vaccines were required there. So we started reaching out to other countries, and again, we must thank to the Minister of External Affairs in India, who on behalf of Bhutan also spoke to partners across the globe, asking them to help Bhutan with a second tranche. We reached out to approximately 30 countries, mostly in the developed world. Denmark offered us close to 250,000 doses. We’ve received several from many European countries that actually met our requirements for the second dose. But at the same time, we also received 500,000 doses of vaccine of Moderna from the US, along with the Pfizer doses from the COVAX facility. Given the scientific evidence at that time, there was no doubt that the mRNA vaccines, the Pfizer and the Moderna were the best vaccines. So we decided to use those vaccines as our second dose. We further gave the doses of AstraZeneca that we received to Nepal and to Thailand. Even for booster doses we have used only Pfizer and Moderna. The booster doses were procured largely by the Royal Government of Bhutan. And now for the children’s vaccine, again, we are going to use Pfizer and going forward I think we are going to stick with the messenger RNA vaccine. But as you said, at that time it was really difficult because the whole world was looking for vaccines, many from Asia and from developing countries. The goodwill that Bhutan has achieved and the very close bilateral relations that have been built over many decades, during their Majesty’s time and also subsequent governments, I think this showed results. We proved during the first vaccination strategy that we were very effective in giving vaccines throughout the country to the whole eligible population within one week. This also built up some sort of trust, so when partners want to give their vaccines, they know that we are going to use it effectively without any wastage. So it was difficult, but I think we managed to achieve and we’d like to thank all the partner countries for their valuable support.

No, no, not at all. Actually, we were already flagged about the possibility of [India] not being able to give the second dose. Although in Bhutan we required the vaccines, the outbreak was very much under control. We had effective lockdowns in place. The whole of 2021, we kept our schools closed. In comparison, the requirements in India were much, much higher than ours, and we truly understood. And, as I said, the government again, through the Ministry of External Affairs, including Dr. Jaishankar, himself, went out of the way during their bilateral meetings in Europe and US to request them to help Bhutan. Eventually, we were delayed only by about two weeks, from the date that we were supposed to give our second dose.

Although we do not have diplomatic relationship with any of the Permanent five (P-5 countries of the UN Security Council) countries, it has not stopped us from engaging with them. And there are many successful partnerships and cooperation in many areas, mostly in the areas of education and scholarships, and capacity building. With the US, we are working on trafficking in Persons, on controlling drugs. With the Chinese, we have very good relations in terms of capacity building workshops etc. China gave us 50,000 doses. Since there were many Bhutanese, who were living in Nepal, and in Thailand, who had received the Chinese vaccine earlier, it was very useful for them to receive their second dose of the same vaccine. We always kept the choice open to the people that if you wanted to use AstraZeneca as your second dose, we had AstraZeneca, if you wanted sinovac, we had sinovac. And if you wanted mRNA, which the Prime Minister said is the preferred one, you got that. I think more than 80% took the mRNA vaccines.

I would like to break this up into two components. One is for the Indians and the other one is for the international tourists that have always had a separate fee based structure. For the international tourists we have what is known as the minimum daily package rate (MDPR) which was $250 during the high season months and $200 for low season months. And this package included your hotel, your guide, your vehicle your food. $65 was charged as sustainable development fee (SDF), which the government put into development work and also in helping the Tourism Council of Bhutan to improve facilities. This was in place since 1991. So for the tourists who came to Bhutan, their experience was limited to the package provided by tour operators. Over time, this prevented diversification, prevented flexibility, prevented growth of the sectors like the hotels and other aspects. And tourism was also very restricted to only cultural tourism and trekking.