1.4 million Indians visited Malaysia, 3 lakh Malaysians travelled to India in 2025: MEA

India Malaysia News: As many as 1.4 million Indian tourists travelled to Malaysia, while around 3 lakh Malaysian tourists visited India in 2025, Secretary (East) in the Ministry of External Affairs, P. Kumaran, said on Sunday.

Briefing the media after the joint press conference addressed by the Indian and Malaysian Prime Ministers, Kumaran said that nearly 2.9 million people of Indian origin live in Malaysia, underlining their role in strengthening bilateral ties and contributing to economic development.

Kumaran said the Indian community in Malaysia not only acts “like a living bridge between the two countries, but it also plays a valuable role in their economic development.”

Highlighting initiatives undertaken by the government for the benefit of the Indian diaspora in Malaysia, he noted India’s recent extension of OCI card eligibility to the sixth generation of persons of Indian origin (PIOs) in the country.

He also said that for the benefit of Indian students studying in Malaysia, the government has recently replenished the scholarships trust fund, adding three million Malaysian ringgit to the corpus.

“The growing number of Indian workers and professionals has necessitated closer cooperation between the two countries in the area of labor welfare,” the Secretary (East) said.

In this context, he added that a Memorandum of Collaboration (MoC) between India’s Employees’ State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) and Malaysia’s Perkeso on social security programmes and activities for Indian citizens was finalised on Sunday.

Referring to tourism, Kumaran said India and Malaysia are extending visa-free or gratis e-visas to each other’s nationals for tourism.

“As a result, in 2025, 1.4 million Indian tourists travelled to Malaysia, whereas 300,000 Malaysian tourists visited India,” he said, adding that Malaysia has become the largest source of inbound tourism to India from the ASEAN region.

He further noted that “The agreement between NIPL and Paynet today would take our people-to-people cooperation a step further by making cross-border QR-based payments possible.”

The Secretary (East) also said Malaysia has proposed increasing passenger capacity and adding more destinations, a proposal that is currently being examined by India’s Ministry of Civil Aviation.

“Given the expanding uh people-to-people connections, the large number of tourists visiting both sides, there was a broad agreement that we need to enhance connectivity and that more airlines and flights should be connecting India and Malaysia,” he said.

(For more news apart from “‘1.4 million Indians visited Malaysia, 3 lakh Malaysians travelled to India in 2025: MEA," stay tuned to Rozana Spokesman.)