By Uditha Jayasinghe
COLOMBO (Reuters) – Sri Lanka's cabinet has approved granting free tourist visas to visitors from 35 countries including China, India and Russia, a senior official said on Thursday, in a bid to boost tourism and revive the crisis-hit economy.
Tourists will be given 30-day visas under a six-month pilot programme starting on October 1, Cabinet spokesman and Transport Minister Bandula Gunawardana said.
“The government's aim is to transform Sri Lanka into a visa-free country like Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, to reap the benefits of a rapidly growing tourism industry,” Gunawardana told reporters at a weekly cabinet briefing.
The extensive list includes India, China, United Kingdom, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Australia, Denmark, Poland, Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Nepal, Indonesia, Russia, Thailand, Malaysia, Japan and France.
The country of 22 million, known for its beaches, ancient temples and aromatic tea, saw its tourism sector hit hard first by the COVID-19 pandemic and then by a severe financial crisis in 2022, leading to mass protests and shortages of basic necessities such as fuel.
But the tourism sector is reaping the benefits of a turnaround that began last year: in mid-August, Sri Lanka welcomed nearly 2 million tourists for the first time since 2019.
The island expects to have 2.3 million arrivals this year.
Latest data from the Sri Lanka Development Authority shows that India is the largest source of tourist arrivals with 246,922, followed by the United Kingdom with 123,992.
Sri Lanka earned $1.5 billion from tourism in the first six months of 2024, up from $875 million in the same period last year, the central bank said. (This story has been corrected to reflect that the $1.5 billion in tourism revenue is for the first six months of 2024, not 2023, in paragraph 9.)
(Reporting by Uditha Jayasinghe; Editing by Michael Perry)
