421.6% more eVisas issued in Dec
In 2014, India issued 39,046 VoAs as compared to 20,294 in 2013, registering a growth of 92.4 per cent. The eVisa launch has worked wonders for tourism in India.
Atotal of 14,083 Tourist Visas on Arrival (VoAs) enabled by Electronic Travel Authorization ( ETA) were issued by the Indian government last month, as compared with 2,700 VoAs during December 2013, registering a growth of 421.6 per cent. The percentage share of top ten source countries for VoA during December 2014 were USA ( 24.26 per cent), Russian Federation ( 15.06 per cent), Republic of Korea ( 11.01 per cent), Ukraine ( 8.16 per cent), Australia (7.98 per cent), New Zealand ( 5.08 per cent), Japan ( 4.30 per cent), Singapore (4.27 per cent), Germany ( 4.05 per cent), and the Philippines (3.10 per cent). The percent- age share of different ports for VoA last month were New Delhi ( 35.78 per cent), Mumbai (21.05 per cent), Goa ( 18.24 per cent), Chennai ( 7.17 per cent), Bengaluru ( 5.76 per cent), Kochi ( 4.54 per cent), Hyderabad (3.13 per cent), Kolkata (2.35 per cent), and Thiruvananthapuram ( 1.98 per cent). In the entire calendar year 2014, 39,046 VoAs were issued as compared with 20,294 in 2013, registering a growth of 92.4 per cent. This high growth was due to introduction of ETA-enabled VoA for 43 countries, launched by the Centre on November 27, 2014. Prior to that, only the VoA scheme was in operation for 12 countries.
VoA registers an increase of 421.6% during December 2014 over the same period last year while the VoAs issued between January and December 2014 registered an increase of 92.4% over the same period.