American, Japanese, Australian and Canadian citizens might be subject to entry visa requirements, as Brazil has decided to impose such requirements.
According to Reuters, the country’s Foreign Ministry is expected to inform the four counties’ governments and later publicly announce the measure, VisaGuide.World reports.
The decision suspends a unilateral decision that the former government made in 2019, which aimed at facilitating tourism. On the other hand, Brazilians still need to apply for visas in order to travel to all these four countries.
Reportedly, the decision to lift visa requirements had impacted Brazil’s ability to negotiate with those countries. The Brazilian government also reveals that tourism rates were minimally improved, although the COVID-19 pandemic can also be a factor for such claims.
The number of tourist arrivals from the United States, who already represented a small fraction of tourists in Brazil, hadn’t reached 2018 levels even in 2022. Moreover, the number of Japanese tourists fell in 2019, recording a 4.5 percent decrease and only 17,000 visited Brazil in 2022.
According to data by Statista, revenue generated by the tourism sector in Brazil has decreased significantly since 2019. More specifically, R$201.2 billion, accounting for $38.5 million in revenues were generated by tourism in Brazil in 2019, with this amount dropping to R$136.1 billion ($26 million) in 2020 and R$152.4 billion ($29 million) in 2021.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, citizens of the United States, Japan, Australia and Canada had to obtain a visa in order to travel to Brazil for tourism and business purposes. However, the Brazilian government announced that it would remove visa requirements for such citizens in an effort to promote tourism.
The decision entered force in March 2020, when along with the COVID-19 measures, visa requirements were waivered.
Passport Index by VisaGuide.World, Brazil’s passport score is 79.19, granting visa-free travel to citizens of 120 countries. In addition, the country doesn’t have any entry ban but it has a visa-required regime with 45 countries, an e-visa regime with 13 countries and Visa-on-arrival with 38 countries.
Moreover, Brazil has an agreement of passport-free travel with eight countries and an Electronic Travel Authorization (eTA) with two countries. These characteristics rank the passport 48th at an international level.
On the other hand, the Japanese passport is estimated as the best passport in the world, ranked first with 89.76 scoring points. It has an agreement of visa-free travel with 142 countries and applies an eTA system to citizens of nine countries.
The Australian passport is ranked 32nd with 86.09 scoring points, Canada’s 41st with 84.25 points and the United States 37th (with 84.89 points).
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