Sri Lanka begins offering visa-free entry to citizens of 35 countries
Sri Lanka will begin offering visa-free entry for citizens of 35 countries starting today.
This policy will allow citizens of countries such as India, the US and the UK to more easily visit the South Asian island nation for up to 30 days. The program will be piloted for a 6-month period and explicitly seeks to imitate visa-free travel programs implemented by Singapore, Vietnam and Thailand.
The move comes amid the backdrop of a severe economic crisis in 2022, where budget deficits, a tourism industry severely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and large external debt resulted in a sharp economic contraction, shortages of vital supplies like fuel and medicine, and large-scale protests resulting in regime change.
Tourism is one of Sri Lanka’s largest industries. Colombo successfully piloted a similar program in 2019 that induced additional tourism after a terrorist attack in the capital earlier that year. Therefore the government likely again sees tourism as the sector that can most quickly scale to improve its precarious economy. Despite its somewhat improved fortunes since 2022, Sri Lanka remains in a precarious economic state, so expect the country to invest in additional tourism incentives or infrastructure such as additional resorts on the previously overlooked southern coast of the island.