In a move that is certain to boost travel to Sri Lanka from its principal markets, especially India, the Sri Lankan government has decided to accord visa-free entry to nationals of 35 countries from October 1.

According to press reports, the decision to resume visa-free access was taken at a meeting of the Sri Lankan Cabinet of Ministers in Colombo on Tuesday.

The reports add that the besides India, other key markets that will have visa-free access to Sri Lanka include the Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Belarus, Belgium, Canada, China, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Iran, Israel, Japan, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nepal, New Zealand, Oman, Poland, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States.

This new order follows a preceding order from October last year, wherein the Sri Lankan Cabinet had approved free visas for travellers India, China, Russia, Malaysia, Japan, Indonesia and Thailand as part of a pilot project in place till March 2024.

In March 2023, the then Sri Lankan foreign minister Ali Sabry had said that his country’s relationship with India was ‘one of the most important in our foreign policy’. India has historically been Sri Lanka’s primary source of inbound tourism.

As reported by PTI, in the statistics for September, India led with more than 30,000 arrivals, comprising 26 pc of the total, while Chinese tourists followed as the second-largest group with over 8,000 arrivals.