(Seychelles News Agency) - The potential for more flights between Seychelles and Italy will help facilitate business relations between the two countries, an Italian businessman said Monday, following a new transportation agreement between the nations last week.

“Now when I buy my liquor bottles from Italy, it has to be transported by sea and it makes a transit stop in Mauritius. It will make the process much faster when the flights begin,” Renato Longobardi, owner of La Buse Manufacture, told SNA.

Seychelles and Italy signed a new air service agreement last week which will come into effect once it is ratified by the Italian parliament. Under the agreement there can be up to 14 passenger flights and 13 cargo flights between the two countries weekly.

Seychelles Minister of Foreign Affairs and Transport Joel Morgan said the agreement will open up both markets to each country. Morgan also highlighted the new liberal air policy that will be presented to local parliament and as part of Seychelles’ work to modernise its air services agreements.

According to the daily newspaper Seychelles Nation, Mauro Massini, the Italian Ambassador to Seychelles, a group of islands in the western Indian Ocean, said that the agreement is an important instrument to promote and exchange air connection between the two countries.

“I really hope with this agreement we can increase the number of Italian tourists that visit Seychelles,” Massini was quoted as saying by the paper.

Italy sends the fourth highest number of visitors to Seychelles with around 22,000 in 2015, according to the statistics bureau.

Seychelles and Italy began bilateral relations and signed its first air service agreement in 1984. Air Seychelles began flights to Rome and Milan in the early 1990s.