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Publish Date : 07-Mar-2015

India will offer its Visa on Arrival (VoA) facility across nine designated airports in order to reinforce the country’s tourism sector significantly. During his first full year budget speech in the Lok Sabha on Saturday, the Union Finance Minister Mr. Arun Jaitley has announced plans to expand the VoA facility to 150 countries from 43 now. The Government has adopted this measure to revitalize the tourism industry of the country.

The CIAL authorities have revealed that the move is to facilitate the airport to see augmented traffic of international passengers, particularly taking the imminent international terminal at the Kochi gateway into consideration. According to the official data, there has been significant increase in the number of international passenger arrivals subsequent to the implementation of the Tourist Visa on Arrival (TVoA) facility on November 11, 2014, at the airport.

Overall 1,741 overseas passengers benefited from the TVoA facility at Kochi airport, together with the Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) facility in last December. The gateway has handled overall 31,813 overseas passengers in the same month, up 34% from the same period last year’s figure of 23,659 passengers. The airport had recorded movements of 21,733 foreign passengers in November 2014.
The Airport Director A C K Nair stated, “Increasing the number of countries with the VoA facility would have a positive impact on the number of foreign passengers, thereby boosting tourism in the State.”

According to the airport officials, the new international terminal will have capacity to manage up to 4,000 passengers even at peak hours, and thus the augmented international traffic is definitely encouraging. To avail the VoA facility, overseas visitors will be required to submit their visa request and fee online, and must have a copy of ‘granted ETA’ with them. The CIAL has installed a dedicated area with 4 counters for the TvoA applicants. The visa offers a 30-day validity period from the arrival date of the visitors.

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