Sri Lanka’s cabinet has approved granting free tourist visas to visitors from 35 countries, including China, India, and Russia, in order to foster tourism and support the country’s crisis-hit economy.
Tourists will be granted 30-day visas under a six-month experimental project beginning Oct. 1, according to Cabinet spokesperson and Transport Minister Bandula Gunawardana.
“The government’s goal is to make Sri Lanka a visa-free country, similar to Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam so that it can benefit from a rapidly growing tourism industry,” Gunawardana told reporters at a weekly cabinet briefing.
India, China, the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Australia, Denmark, Poland, Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Nepal, Indonesia, Russia, Thailand, Malaysia, Japan, and France are among the numerous countries featured.
The country of 22 million people, known for its beaches, historic temples, and scented tea, saw its tourism economy hammered first by the COVID-19 epidemic, followed by a major financial crisis in 2022 that resulted in large protests and gasoline shortages.
However, the tourism industry is benefiting from a resurgence that began last year, with Sri Lanka reporting nearly 2 million visits by mid-August for the first time since 2019. The island expects 2.3 million arrivals this year.
According to the Sri Lanka Development Authority’s most recent figures, India is the largest source of tourists, with 246,922 arrivals, followed by the United Kingdom with 123,992.
Sri Lanka collected $1.5 billion from tourism in the first six months of 2024, up from $875 million in the same period last year, according to the central bank.
