Foreign tourist arrivals up 5.4% in March

JAKARTA (JP): Foreign visitors to Indonesia rose to 371,311 in March, up 5.4 percent on March last year, according to a report by the Ministry of Tourism, Post and Telecommunications.

The report said foreign tourist arrivals rose 4.3 percent in January and 3.4 percent in February.

Indonesia had 989,208 foreign tourist arrivals in the first three months of the year up from 974,429 in 1996.

This is the number of foreigners entering Indonesia through seven major entry points, Entikong, on the Indonesia-Malaysia border in West Kalimantan, and airports in Jakarta, Bali, Medan, Batam, Surabaya and Manado.

Foreign tourists spent US$545.45 million in Indonesia in March.

In the first three months of this year, foreign tourists spent $1.21 million, up from $1.15 million in the same period last year.

The report said the number of tourists visiting Indonesia through Jakarta's Soekarno-Hatta airport dropped in March by 11.6 percent to 123,500 from 139,633 in March 1996.

Tourist arrivals through Jakarta also dropped in January and February, but the 11.6 percent decrease was the highest compared with 2.2 percent in January and 7.7 percent in February.

In March, there was a 28.7 percent drop in Entikong to 991 from 1,390 in March 1996. In February, arrivals through this town fell by 66.8 percent.

According to the report the government expected between 951,500 and 1.02 million foreign tourist arrivals from the seven entry points in the January-March period this year.

Last year foreign arrivals rose 17 percent to five million, bringing in $5.13 billion in foreign exchange.

Indonesia expects to earn between $7.2 billion and $7.8 billion from between 5.3 million and 5.7 million foreign arrivals this year. (icn)