JOIN US189 Japanese used the facility, followed by 148 Singaporeans who availed it in August. As a facilitative measure to attract more foreign tourists to India, government has launched visa-on-arrival scheme from January 2010 for citizens of five countries - Finland, Japan, Luxembourg, New Zealand and Singapore - visiting India for tourism purpose.
In August a total number 3.82 lakh foreign tourists visted the country, out of which 506 foreigners availed the scheme. Besides tourists from Japan and Singapore, 39 visitors from Finland, 113 from New Zealand and 17 from Luxemburg came to India using the visa-on-arrival facility.
During January-August 2010, 4022 VoAs were issued under this scheme. The number of visas issued under this scheme, during January-August 2010 for nationals of the five countries were Singapore (1312), New Zealand (969), Finland (886), Japan (814) and Luxembourg (41).
During January–August, 2010, the maximum number of VoAs were issued at Delhi airport (2127), followed by Mumbai (854), Chennai (833) and Kolkata (208).