India woos RI tourists

JAKARTA (JP): India aims to increase the number of Indonesian tourists by at least 25 percent this year and double the frequency of direct flights between the two countries, a senior Indian official says.

India's visiting Minister of Tourism Sukhbuns Kaur said in a press conference yesterday that currently only 6,000 Indonesians travel to India every year.

"This is a very small number. And there are only two Air India flights between Indonesia and India every week," she said.

Shanka Dhar, the deputy director general of India's department of tourism, said that even though visitors from Indonesia were rather negligible, compared to the total of 1.89 million tourist arrivals in India last year, the number of tourists from Indonesia increased by a robust 33 percent last year.

"This increase, which has been accomplished with no major effort, is very encouraging," he said.

Kaur arrived on Sunday for a two-day visit to Indonesia. She met yesterday with Minister of Tourism, Post and Telecommunications Joop Ave and businesspeople in the tourism industry. (pwn)