CAIRO, May 6 (Aswat Masriya) - Inbound tourism to Egypt increased by 10.6 percent in March, the state's Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS) said on Wednesday.

CAPMAS said in a statement that last March witnessed 834.6 thousand tourists arriving to the country, as opposed to the 754.7 thousand tourists who arrived in March 2014.

The majority of the tourists who visited Egypt in March arrived from western Europe, CAPMAS said, making up 37.8 percent of the tourists. Over 31 percent of the aforementioned hail from the United Kingdom.

Eastern Europe closely followed, with 37.3 percent of the tourists arriving from there. Tourists arriving from the Middle East meanwhile made up 13.7 percent of those who visited Egypt.

The number of Arab tourists visiting the country increased to 19.1 percent in March 2015, as opposed to 17 percent during the same month last year, CAPMAS said.

Tourism was a main source of income in Egypt until a popular uprising which toppled former President Hosni Mubarak's regime in 2011 triggered four years of political turmoil, taking its toll on the sector.

Even though tourism revenues rose to $7.5 billion throughout the year 2014, they remain below the figures prior to the January 2011 uprising. Revenues reached $12.5 billion in 2010, which is often referred to as the "peak year"  for tourism in Egypt.

The cabinet said last month that Egypt expects revenues from the tourism sector to reach $26 billion by 2020, as it is implementing a strategy to increase the number of tourists visiting annually to 20 million.