Even amidst a presidential election in Sri Lanka in January, the tourist arrivals during the month as compared the same month in 2014 has increased by 6.6 per cent with the arrival of 156,246 tourists, reveal latest data.

There has been a significant growth in Indian tourists where as those from Russia and Ukraine has shown a decrease.

The number of Indians arriving into Sri Lanka during January 2015 has been 22,944 which is 28.3 per cent and an increase after several years.

However, Russian tourists have decreased by 13.6 per cent to 9,240 while those from Ukraine have decreased by 48.4 per cent with tourist arrivals from Poland also decreasing by 17.6 per cent to 1,808.

Meanwhile, tourist arrivals from East Russia have shown a slight increase of 1.5 per cent to 26,198 and arrivals from China have increased by 8.9 per cent to 11,735.

For the third consecutive year China has been the country from where the largest number of tourists arrive in Sri Lanka.