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By Uditha Jayasinghe
COLOMBO (Reuters) - Sri Lanka's cabinet approved issuing free tourist visas to visitors from 35 countries including China, India and Russia, a top official said on Thursday, in an effort to boost tourism and help revive its crisis-hit economy.
Tourists will be given 30-day visas under a six-month pilot programme that will start from Oct. 1, said Cabinet spokesman and Transport Minister Bandula Gunawardana.
"The aim of the government is to transform Sri Lanka into a free visa country, much like Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam to tap into the benefits of a rapidly growing tourism industry," Gunawardana told reporters at a weekly cabinet briefing.
The extensive list includes India, China, UK, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Australia, Denmark, Poland, Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Nepal, Indonesia, Russia, Thailand, Malaysia, Japan, and France.
The country of 22 million people, famed for its beaches, ancient temples and aromatic tea, saw its tourism industry pummelled first by the COVID-19 pandemic and then by a severe financial crisis in 2022 that saw mass scale protests and shortages of essentials such as fuel.
But the tourism industry is reaping the benefits of a turnaround that began last year with Sri Lanka clocking nearly 2 million arrivals by mid-August, for the first time since 2019.
The island is expecting to close the year at 2.3 million arrivals.
India is the largest source of tourists with 246,922 arrivals, followed by UK with 123,992, latest data from the Sri Lanka Development Authority showed.
Sri Lanka earned $1.5 billion from tourism in the first six months of 2024, up from $875 million dollars during the same period last year, according to the central bank. (This story has been corrected to show that the $1.5 bln is earnings from tourism in the first six months of 2024, not 2023, in paragraph 9)
(Reporting by Uditha Jayasinghe; Editing by Michael Perry)
