Colombo: Sri Lanka cabinet has backed a new scheme to offer free tourist visas to people from 35 countries, including China, India and Russia. The Cabinet of Sri Lanka declared this decision on Thursday through a spokesman, the Transport Minister, Bandula Gunawardana, as Sri Lanka seeks ways to boost up and restore the country’s tourism industry in line with the island state’s desperately struggling economy. The 30-day tourist visas will be granted without charge under a six-month trial starting October 1.
Minister Gunawardana said that the government aspired to make Sri Lanka a visa-on-arrival country like Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. The spirit of the endeavor is to work with the positive trends of the development of the global tourism market to attract more tourists and reactivate the economy.
The list of countries allowed to visit without a Visa is also large, and some of them are the United Kingdom, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Australia, Denmark, Poland, Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Nepal, Indonesia, Russia, Thailand, Malaysia, Japan and France. In this regard, this move is taken in line with the plan to increase the tourism industry of Sri Lanka, which was affected both by COVID-19 and a financial crisis in the country in 2022, which led to protests and issues related to the scarcity of basic life needs.
Silver sandy beaches, ancient architectural temples, and the famous Ceylon tea country, Sri Lanka, have seen a positive shift in tourism since last year. The island nation recorded nearly 2 million tourist arrivals by mid-August, the highest since the pandemic in 2019. The government estimates that the cumulative figure of arrivals for the year will be 2.3 million.
India is the most significant source market, with 246,922 visitors, while the UK comes second with 123,992. Other key areas of the economy have also disclosed improvements; the tourism revenues are up, and Sri Lanka, for instance, has earned $1.5 billion in the initial half of the financial year 2024, up from $875 million within the initial half of the prior.
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