Sri Lanka's tourism industry have started picking up with tourist arrivals surpassing 100,000 within the first three months and keeping a upward trend, the official Daily News reported Tuesday.

Despite the tsunami's affect on the tourism industry, the Indian Ocean island country recorded 119,832 tourist arrivals for January to March, compared with 131,952 of last year in the same period.

"Even with the tsunami, 38,187, 36,645 and 45,000 tourist arrivals have been recorded at the Research and International Affairs Division of the Sri Lanka Tourist Board (SLTB), for January, February and March," SLTB Director General S. Kalaiselvam said.

"Tourist arrivals have started picking up. We can see that clearly through the March figures. We have 45,000 tourist arrivals in March," he said.

According to the SLTB, last year there were 49,950 tourist arrivals for January, 43,584 for February and 38,418 for March.

It has dropped by 17,950 and 6,939 for the first two months when compared with the previous year's figure mainly as a result of the tsunami devastation. However, the figure of March was 6,582 more than that of last year.

According to SLTB's latest reports, Indians have topped tourist arrivals with 13,872, Britains second with 11,682 and Germans third with 5,202 in the first three months.

There were 3,339 tourists from Canada and the United States and 1,878 from Australia and New Zealand. 

Several important decisions taken by the authorities such as duty concessions and soft loan schemes to rebuild hotels have assisted hoteliers to overcome the tsunami predicament, said the paper.

"Within a very short period, the government has taken steps to re-establish infrastructure facilities in tsunami affected areas. Bus services and the train service are back on track," Kalaiselvam said.

Tourism is the fourth largest foreign exchange earner for Sri Lanka, accounting for about 5 percent of its Gross Domestic Product. 

(Xinhua News Agency April 12, 2005)