Published on : Tuesday, June 11, 2019
While speaking to ‘Daily News’ he explained that this feature would be provided to the nationals of EU countries and USA and UK, initially. Earlier, this facility was designed to be offered to EU, UK, USA, SAARC countries and a few other chosen countries from May 1st but was delayed due to the Easter Sunday blasts.
At present, Sri Lanka provides ‘on arrival visa’ only to the citizens of Singapore, Nepal and the Maldives. Previously, the island offered on arrival visa to several other countries, akin to the Singapore policy. Nevertheless, that decision was stopped temporarily eight years ago. The Minister stated that the government will currently offer this facility to draw more arrivals in the aftermath of Easter Sunday blasts. He explained that the Foreign Ministry working on completely getting travel advisories detached. Now, the security situation is totally under control and Foreign missions are made to understand this. “We spoke to Ambassadors based in Sri Lanka, first to tone done the advisories which have been done and now will talk to them again to completely remove them.”
Senanayake who was also the one time Minister of Tourism, took part in the 2018 World Tourism Market in London in November and launched Sri Lanka’s new brand identity ‘So Sri Lanka’.
Senanayake mentioned that Sri Lanka Embassies abroad too have been briefed to endorse tourism in a more organized manner. “Each Embassy too has been given targets to promote tourism and a performance report would be called at the end of the year.”
Tags: Sri Lanka