Japanese tourists make maximum use of India's visa on arrival

As many as 2,564 tourists from Japan, 1,789 from New Zealand, 1,514 from Indonesia, 1,442 from Philippines and 1,178 from Singapore availed of the visa on arrival facility between January and August this year, an official release said.

The month of August also saw a 90.2 per cent jump in issuing visa on arrival for tourist as 1,750 of them availed of the facility compared to August last year.

During the period January-August 2012, a total number of 9,412 VoAs were issued against 7,514 VoAs during the corresponding period of 2011, registering a rise of 25.3 per cent.

In August this year, nationals of the ten countries who availed the VoA were Japan (693), Philippines (349), Indonesia (255), New Zealand (201), Singapore (162), Finland (42), Vietnam (20), Luxembourg (10), Cambodia (10), Myanmar (8). No one from Laos availed of the scheme.

During the period January-August 2012, the maximum number of VoAs were issued at Delhi airport (5489), followed by Mumbai (1981), Chennai (1365) and Kolkata (577).

As a facilitative measure to attract more foreign tourists to India, government launched a VoA Scheme in January 2010 for citizens of five countries - Finland, Japan, Luxembourg, New Zealand and Singapore, visiting India for tourism purposes.

This scheme was extended for citizens of six more countries - Cambodia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines, Laos and Myanmar from January 2011.