ECONOMYNEXT – Sri Lanka’s foreign exchange revenue from tourism in November 2025 fell 7.8 percent from a year ago to 251.6 million US dollars, the central bank said, quoting tourism promotion authority data.
The island nation’s tourism revenue has been lower since August this year compared to arrival after the relevant authority revising down per day tourism spending, Central Bank officials have said.
The monthly revenue showed a fall for the third time in five months. It has been falling in July and August before rising marginally in the next two months.
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The revenue from tourism, which accounts for nearly 3 percent of the island nation’s economy, fell despite a 15.6 percent increase in the November monthly tourist arrivals to 212,906, the data showed.
In July, the revenue fell 3 percent to 318.5 million US dollars compared to the same month in the previous year’s 328.3 million US dollars. In August, the revenue fell 8.2 percent from a year ago to 258.9 million US dollars.
The revenue for the first 11 months of this year has seen a rise of 3.7 percent to 2.91 billion US dollars from a year ago.
Sri Lanka will miss this year’s ambitious 5 billion US dollar revenue and a 3 million arrival target. Tourism officials expect a slight dip in the arrivals in the first half of December due to Ditwah devastation in the Central Sri Lankan district of Kandy and Nuwara Eliya.
The island nation witnessed 3.17 billion dollar revenue in 2024, with a 53.2 percent jump compared to 2.07 billion dollars in the previous year, the data showed.
The arrivals have picked up 16.6 percent in the first 11 months of 2025 compared to the same period last year with the number of foreign visitors to Sri Lanka rising to 2,103,593 in the period compared to last year’s 1,804,873.
The arrivals jumped 38.1 percent to 2.05 million in 2024 compared to the previous year. Sri Lanka missed its ambitious 2.3 million tourist arrival target and 5 billion dollar revenue goal in 2024.
Tourism accounted for nearly 5 percent of Sri Lanka’s economy when the sector was at its peak in 2018. Since then, it has been hit by violent Easter Sunday suicide attack in 2019 and Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 followed by an unprecedented economic crisis.
The tourism earnings figure is estimated from a survey conducted by the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority.
Sri Lanka’s imports and the merchandise trade deficit have gradually picked up as tourism earnings came in and people in the sector spent the wages and other earnings. (Colombo/December 14/2025)
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