Visa-Free Regime with China Boosts Tourism to Kazakhstan, Official Says

The visa-free agreement with China, introduced last year, has positively impacted the tourist flow to Kazakhstan, Orda.kz reports.

Deputy Minister of Tourism and Sports Yerzhan Yerkinbayev shared this information during a government briefing, where he also identified other countries:

Of course, these are border countries. Not only in Kazakhstan, this is the case everywhere. Border countries are the top suppliers of tourists: Uzbekistan, the Russian Federation, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan. The visa-free regime has given us a serious flow, increasing from year to year almost twofold from China. Those from India travel very intensively throughout the country. Traditionally, we have a good flow from Germany. Azerbaijan and Germany are approximately the same, we receive about 100 thousand tourists a year,
said Yerkinbayev.

He also noted steady growth in visitors from Poland and the United States.

Original Author: Ilya Astakhov