India Set to Welcome Back Visitors for First Time in 18 Months
India will soon welcome visitors for the first time in over 18 months, as the government will restart issuing visas. At first, tourists arriving by chartered flight will be able to visit starting from October 15. Everyone else will be able to visit starting a month later, on November 15.
Foreign nationals will be able to apply for a visa for the first time since March 2020, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government imposed a strict lockdown in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
“After considering various inputs, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has decided to begin granting fresh Tourist Visas for foreigners coming to India through chartered flights with effect from October 15, 2021,” the home ministry said in a statement on Thursday.
India welcomed 10.6 million foreign tourist arrivals in 2019, the year before the pandemic, according to official figures reported by CNN. In 2018, foreign exchange earnings from tourism amounted to $28.6 billion. So tourism is a big part of the economy for Asia’s third-largest economy.
India, with a population of 1.3 billion people, experience a deadly surge earlier this year with about 4,000 daily Covid-19 deaths recorded in the month of May. Cases and fatalities and since slowed to approximately 20,000 new daily infections and 200 to 300 deaths in recent weeks.
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