SL visa problem caused by technical issue

Sri Lanka’s visa problem that doubled the visa cost to $ 100 was due to a technical issue as the visa processing company missed out on the 30-day visa, Tourism Minister Harin Fernando said.

Speaking to CNBC, he said that the technical issue happened in connection with the country moving away from Electronic Travel Authorization (ETA) to requiring travelers to have an e-visa which was processed by VFS Global.

He said that when the program launched, the very popular 30-day visa was missed out by the processing company which led to a drop in arrivals in April.

Accordingly, the cost to obtain a short-term visa to visit Sri Lanka rose from $ 50 to $ 100 in April.

Minister Fernando said that the 30-day visa is back with a $ 50 price tag but travelers coming from 67 countries may not even need to pay this if the free visa policies the country is currently looking into are enacted within this month.

Both parties agreed that 30-day travel visas priced at $ 50 had been reinstated as of 7 May. VFS Global, in an email sent to CNBC on Monday (13), said that on this date, “Sri Lanka’s Department of Immigration and Emigration re-introduced the 30-day visa category for all nationalities.”

In a response, VFS Global which processes visas in more than 150 countries around the world, said that visa categories were introduced as per the directives of (Sri Lanka’s) Department of Immigration and Emigration.

The statement also said that VFS Global manages non-judgmental and administrative tasks related to the application process only and the decision to grant or reject the visa is at the sole discretion of the Department of Immigration and Emigration.

As part of the digital transformation and modernization of the visa system, the Government of Sri Lanka decided to adopt VFS Global’s digital platform for its e-visa and visa-on-arrival process which was launched in April. The objective is to make the process seamless to aid increased tourism and investment opportunities.