In a bid to draw in more tourists from China, India has extended e-visa facility for Chinese travelers, timing it to coincide with the visit of President Xi Jinping to India, the Indian embassy here said on Saturday.
Xi arrived in the historic coastal city of Mamallapuram in Tamil Nadu on Friday for the second informal meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
India has declared a five-year tourist e-visa with multiple entry facilities for Chinese travelers, coinciding with the present visit of President Xi in a bid to attract more tourists, the embassy said in an announcement.
“It is anticipated that this unilateral liberalization of e-TV for Chinese nationals can any enhance people-to-people exchanges between the 2 countries and encourage a lot of Chinese tourists to decide on Bharat as a destination for commercial enterprise functions,” it said.
India has already been providing an e-visa facility for Chinese tourists for a few times. however, the number of Chinese visitors has not been increased a lot. Last year only 2.5 lakh Chinese visited India against 7.5 Indians who toured China.
Now the e-visa facility has been any liberalized for Chinese nationals.
On Friday, India declared to include Chinese nationals in the five-year e-facility, which is being provided to tourists from a large range of countries, officials here said.
The visa fee for the five-year multiple-entry will be USD 80, the release said.
In addition, it’s also been set that prospective tourists can avail single entry 30-day validity e-Tourist Visa (e-TV) at a reduced visa fee of USD 25. For a 30-day e-TV during the months of Apr to June, the visa fee will be only USD 10, it said.
The one-year multiple-entry e-TV will still be offered however at a reduced visa fee of USD 40, the release said.
Besides, the existing e-medical visa, e-conference visa, and the one-year multiple-entry e-business visa can still be issued from the web platform of Indian visas.
A number of nations are creating efforts to woo Chinese tourists as they form the biggest chunk of tourists in the world.
Last year, about 150 million Chinese nationals created outbound journeys to various parts of the globe.
Source: https://www.deccanherald.com
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