Mint Primer: India-Canada standoff: How it's shaping bilateral ties
Mint explains: In 2022, an estimated 277,291 foreign tourists landed from Canada in India. This makes the country the fifth largest source nation for tourists behind the US, Bangladesh, UK and Australia. The number of tourists from Canada has grown over three-fold from 2021, when only 80,437 tourists had come.
However, this is still lower than the peak levels—before the pandemic nearly 352,000 Canadians visited India in 2019. Canada accounted for 4.5% of all foreign tourists arriving in the country in 2022, and these are the people directly impacted by the ban on visas by India. This is bad news for the aviation and hospitality industry in India, as the ban comes before the tourist season.
More than half of annual foreign tourists in India come in the last three months of the year. December is when arrivals peak, overall, and so do foreign exchange earnings from tourism. While the ban does not apply to those who have secured visas, considering most of the bookings for December happen around the August-October period, this year would be partially washed out.
At the same time, Canadian citizens who have already made plans to visit India are also likely to reconsider their travel plans. The two countries have a relatively modest $8 billion trade that is almost split equally—India has a slight edge with exports of $4.1 billion as of 2022-23. Thriving trade requires business visas.
While the current souring of relations is unlikely to impact trade ties directly, it has already resulted in a pause in negotiations for a free trade agreement between the two countries. In the event of any further deterioration in relations, the impact will almost certainly be on students from India studying in Canadian universities. There are an
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