Huge jump in Chinese, Pakistani visitors to India

New Delhi, June 10 (UNI) China and Pakistan are fast emerging as tourist source markets for India with a phenomenal rise of visitors for the last three years, an industry body said here today.

In 2005, tourists from China registered a whopping increase of 31.6 per cent at 44,897 visitors. There was a 61 per cent rise in arrivals in 2004 with 34,100 visitors over the previous year at 21,152 visitors.

While there was more than a five-fold increase in Pakistani tourists visiting India in 2004 at 67,416, the year 2003 saw 10,364 visitors coming in, the upward trend continuing in 2005 with visitor arrivals rising by 31 per cent to 88,609.

''The surge in visitors from China and Pakistan in large measure is due to the second-track confidence building measures (CBM) launched by FICCI in a big way since 2003-2004,'' the industry chamber FICCI said.

However, from South Asia, there has been a modest decline in arrivals from Bangladesh and Bhutan in an otherwise upward trend of visitors from the region in 2005, it added.

Bangladesh, occupying the third slot in tourist arrivals to India, has seen an overall drop in numbers from 4,77,446 in 2004 to 4,56,371 in 2005. The figure stood at 4,54,611 in 2003.

In overall terms, the UK continued to rank first amongst the top ten source markets for tourist arrivals to India at 6,51,083 visitors, followed closely by the US at 6,11,165.

Overall, India received 39,18,610 foreign tourists in 2005.

This has risen by 13 per cent in 2006 to 44,29,915.

The top 10 tourism source markets for India in 2005 were the UK (6,51,083 arrivals), the US (6,11,165), Bangladesh (4,56,371), Canada (1,57,643), France (1,52,258), Sri Lanka (1,36,400) and Germany (1,20,243).

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