Despite the tsunami effect on Sri Lanka's tourism industry, the island country received 167,511 tourists from January to April, nearly 5000 more than the figure of 162,624 during the same period of last year.

The official Daily News reported Tuesday that there were 38,187 tourist arrivals in January and 36,645 in February, dropping by 17,950 and 6,939 from previous year's figure mainly due to the tsunami devastation.

However, the Indian Ocean island country received 50,418 and 42,261 tourists in March and April, increased by 31 percent and 38 percent from last year's figures of 38,418 and 30,672 respectively.

"Tourist arrivals have started picking up. We can see that clearly through the March and April figures," the paper quoted S. Kalaiselvam, director general of the Sri Lanka Tourist Board (SLTB)as saying.

"We are expecting more tourist arrivals with the forthcoming Sri Lankan Travel Mart which will be held from June 3 to 5 in Colombo. This will be a major event in the Sri Lankan travel calendar in the aftermath of tsunami catastrophe," Kalaiselvam said.

The highest number of tourist arrivals to Sri Lanka in the aftermath of the tsunami have been from the West European and South Asian countries, according to statistics from the SLTB.

These include UK (26,211), Germany (13,071), France (9,636), the Netherlands (3,882), Italy (2,841), Switzerland (2,532), Sweden (1,509) and Norway (1,437) which were among the 67,092 tourist arrivals up to April.

There were 48,129 tourist arrivals from South Asian countries from January to April this year including 34,575 from India, 8,250from the Maldives, 3,843 from Pakistan 3,843 and 1,461 from others.

After the tsunami, the Sri Lankan government took several steps to recover the tourism industry including giving duty concessions and soft loans to local hoteliers.

Tourism is the fourth largest foreign exchange earner for Sri Lanka, accounting for about 5 percent of its Gross Domestic Product.

Sri Lanka's total tourist arrivals for 2004 was 566,202. The government has a target of receiving 1 million tourist arrivals by2010.

(Xinhua News Agency May 31, 2005)