COLOMBO: Sri Lanka will soon end the practice of issuing passports that are valid only for Middle Eastern countries and instead issue only passports that are valid for all countries with effect from the new year, the Department of Immigration and Emigration has announced.
Immigration and Emigration Controller General M.N. Ranasinghe said only passports with the ‘All Countries’ mark will be issued from January 1, 2019 after ending the issuance of passports valid only for ‘Middle East Countries’ on December 31. This was being done in view of Sri Lanka introducing the e-passport service to its citizens. He said the department was hoping to implement the e-passport project soon with an electronic chip that carries the owner’s bio data.
“Most Sri Lankans who have passports valid only for Middle East countries have to obtain another passport when they need to travel for jobs in countries like South Korea and Cyprus. We have placed orders for only ‘All Countries’ passports that will be issued until the implementation of the e-passport project,” Mr. Ranasinghe said.
All Sri Lankan diplomatic missions overseas have been informed of the change.
Previously, Sri Lankans could apply for a passport valid for specified countries including India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Maldives, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia,United Arab Emirates, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Yemen. This passport has lesser number of visa pages and the processing fee is lower than that of the ‘All countries’ passport.
Over a half a million Sri Lankan migrant workers are employed in various sectors across the Middle East. Worker remittances are Sri Lanka’s largest foreign income earner, which along with tourism earnings bridge the negative balance in the current account.
Meanwhile, according to data released by the Central Bank, the earnings sent by Sri Lankans working abroad rebounded in October, ending a five-month declining streak. Sri Lankan expats sent home earnings worth of US $ 599 million during October, which is an increase of 9.7 percent year-on-year (YoY), compared to US $ 538 million in the same month last year. Consequently, the decline in cumulative worker remittances, which stood at 1.5 percent YoY up to September, has come down to 0.5 percent YoY for the first 10 months of the year. The cumulative remittance earnings for the 10 months stood at US $ 5,876 million. A World bank report projected that the remittance inflow to Sri Lanka is estimated to grow by 5.4 percent YoY this year to US $ 7,579 million, which would be equivalent to 8.1 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.
