COLOMBO, March 27 (Xinhua) -- The Sri Lankan government is planning to achieve the target of attracting 2.5 million international tourist arrivals to the country this year, a minister here said on Tuesday.

Tourism Development Minister John Amaratunga told Xinhua that while receiving 2.1 million tourists last year, Sri Lanka was confident of attracting more than 2.5 million in 2018.

He said Sri Lankan Airlines, the national carrier of Sri Lanka would increase the frequency of flight operations to regional destinations to facilitate tourism growth.

"We are in talks with some budget airlines in the region for flight operations to Sri Lanka. We will also develop our domestic airports to operate small aircraft," he said.

Sri Lanka received as many as 474,542 international tourists during the first two months of this year. It is an increase of 13.8 percent compared with the corresponding period of last year.

China, India, Britain, France and Germany are the five key international tourist markets.