“Sri Lanka to offer Golden Visa to investors”
State Minister of Tourism Diana Gamage, Senior Advisor to the State Tourism Ministry Dr. Senaka De Silva, and Coordinating Secretary to the State Tourism Minister Dr. Arosha Fernando during the inauguration of the ‘Blockchain Centre’ in Sri Lanka at the World Trade Centre yesterday with the investors from five different Countries, UK, Australia, Dubai, Singapore and Poland. Picture by Marlon Karunaratne
Sri Lanka will soon offer a Golden Visa for investors, State Minister for Tourism, Diana Gamage said. She said that this will be to investors who make a minimum investment commitment of USD. 250,000 in a local bank or by investing in a government approved project.
She said that the ‘Golden Visa’ system is not something new but being successfully implemented in many parts of the world to woo investors. The visa confers investors and their dependents authorization to work and study in Sri Lanka.
Gamage said this after opening Sri Lanka’s first “Blockchain Centre Sri Lanka” at the World Trade Centre yesterday. Gamage said that this proposal has received a good response from the government; they are now in the process of working out the final arrangement before the launch. The State Minister also disclosed that the government is once again looking at introducing the visa on arrival facility for tourists minus any fee. This would not be limited only to European investors but to all nationals.
When asked if this move will result in the drop of revenue to the government by way of drying visa fee income she said that the country will earn more by way of tourism spending.
“I think it’s better to forget the USD 50 visa fee from a single passenger and woo tourists who spend around USD 1,000 per day. This is what Singapore and many such countries are successfully doing.”
Gamage was also very optimistic of both tourism arrivals and revenue and said that Sri Lanka is positively moving towards reaching the 1.9 million arrival target and USD 4.9 billion revenue target this year.”
In the first quarter of 2023 Sri Lanka has already passed 330,000 arrivals averaging more than 100,0000 arrivals each month and the country has also secured over USD 333 million for the first three months. She said that “Blockchain technology too would help to increase standards of the tourism sector and it will also lead to the increase of business travelers.”