Indonesia lowers five year target for tourist arrivals

JAKARTA (JP): The government has revised down its target for foreign tourist arrivals over the next five years due to the worsening political situation here.

Director General of Tourism I Gde Ardhika said that based on the revised target, the number of foreign tourists coming into the country in the year 2003 should reach 6.9 million, a drastic drop from the initial target of 11 million.

He said the revisions were made in the light of a slowdown in tourism here over the past two years.

"A number of well-publicized riots over the past two years have tarnished Indonesia's image. This, along with constant political turmoil resulted in a drop in the number of foreign tourists visiting Indonesia in 1997 and 1998," he was quoted by Antara as saying.

Ardhika said foreign tourist arrivals in 1998 dropped by 20 percent from their 1997 level to around 3.8 million visitors, well below the government's target of 4.8 million.

In 1997, 5.04 million foreign tourists visited the country.

Foreign exchange receipts from the tourist industry in 1997 were $6.62 billion, about $1 billion below the original target.

Ardhika said that Indonesia should expect to see the signs of a recovery in tourism later this year, but qualified this by adding that arrivals would not show any increase on last year's disappointing figures.

"We expect foreign tourist arrivals in 1999 and the year 2000 to reach around 3.8 million visitors, the same level as in 1998."

Ardhika said that Indonesia would start to record a growth in the number of foreign tourists arrivals by the year 2001, when the current political tensions have been thoroughly resolved.

"For 2001, we predict that the number of foreign tourists could reach 3.99 million, five percent up on our forecast for 2000.

"Starting from 2002, we expect to see a double digit growth in the number of foreign tourists visiting our country," he said, adding that a 10 percent increase to 4.3 million visitors was expected in 2002, rising to 6.9 million visitors in 2003.

The former target was 11 million visitors in 2003, generating US$15 billion in foreign exchange earnings. (gis)