Indonesia's government has relaxed tourist travel requirements to allow Papua New Guineans visa-free access to Indonesia.
Cross border flow between Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. Photo: RNZ / Johnny Blades
The newspaper, The National, reports the Indonesian Ambassador in PNG, Ronald JP Manik, as saying that ordinary PNG passport carriers wanting to visit Indonesia as tourists do not require a visa to enter.
He said the relaxing of the travel requirement was agreed to recently between the two governments.
Mr Manik said the arrangement should allow more Papua New Guineans to visit Indonesia since there would be a flight connecting Mt Hagen's Kagamuga airport to Indonesia from next year.
The ambassador also said that as PNG was the only country that shared a land border with Indonesia, the visa-free arrangement would help ease the flow of trade traffic through the main border access point between Jayapura and PNG's Vanimo.