{"id":22755,"date":"2024-08-22T07:35:57","date_gmt":"2024-08-22T07:35:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/?p=22755"},"modified":"2024-08-22T07:35:57","modified_gmt":"2024-08-22T07:35:57","slug":"sri-lanka-approves-free-tourist-visas-for-35-countries-to-boost-tourism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/2024\/08\/sri-lanka-approves-free-tourist-visas-for-35-countries-to-boost-tourism\/","title":{"rendered":"Sri Lanka approves free tourist visas for 35 countries to boost tourism"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>MONITORING (SW) &#8211; Sri Lanka&#8217;s cabinet approved issuing free tourist visas to visitors from 35 countries, a top official said on Thursday, in an effort to boost tourism and help revive its crisis-hit economy.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;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,&#8221; Gunawardana told reporters at a weekly cabinet briefing.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>The country of 22 million people, famed for its beaches, ancient temples and aromatic tea, saw its tourism industry pummeled 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, according to Reuters.<\/p>\n<p>However, 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.<\/p>\n<p>The island is expecting to close the year at 2.3 million arrivals.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>Sri Lanka earned $1.5 billion from tourism in the first six months of 2023, up from $875 million dollars during the same period last year, according to the central bank.<\/p>\n<h6><em><strong>ENDS<\/strong><\/em><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>MONITORING (SW) &#8211; Sri Lanka&#8217;s cabinet approved issuing free tourist visas to visitors from 35 countries, a top official said on Thursday, in an effort to boost tourism and help revive its crisis-hit economy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":22757,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[990,984,194,981,982,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest","category-news","category-world","category-economy","category-international","category-headline"],"views":38,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22755"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22755\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22758,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22755\/revisions\/22758"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}