Millions more phone lines to be installed by 1999

JAKARTA (JP): The government announced here yesterday a new installation target of eight million telephone lines for the ongoing Sixth Five-Year Development Plan period to end in March 1999.

The new target includes 6.7 million fixed-telephone lines and a network capacity for 1.3 million mobile telephones.

Minister of Tourism, Post and Telecommunications Joop Ave, said yesterday that the previous target of five million lines would be surpassed with the installation of 6.5 million fixed- telephone lines by the end of 1998, while some 200,000 other fixed-telephone lines and 1.3 million mobile telephones will be in operation by the first quarter of 1999.

When closing a ministerial workshop here yesterday, Joop Ave said that Indonesia will enter the information technology era with "Nusantara 2001", a high-tech information network connecting the archipelago.

"We have no other choice and this will place Indonesia among the family of nations," he said.

Nusantara 2001, which will include multimedia technology in several big cities and wide-band super lanes by the year 2001, will be put into place by state-owned PT Telkom.

In relation to the postal service, Minister Joop Ave announced that state-owned PT Pos Indonesia now serves 43 percent of the country's villages, 7.5 percent more than initially projected for the ongoing Sixth Five-Year Development Plan.

Joop said that the postal service is expected to increase the rate to 50 percent by 1999.

In relation to tourism, he said that the government will set up a special team to analyze the reasons for the slowdown in the growth rate of tourist arrivals in North Sumatra.

"The local authorities, travel agents, hotels and other related parties are expected to support the team in investigating why the growth of tourist arrivals has slowed down in North Sumatra," he said.

Official data reveal that the number of tourist arrivals dropped dramatically in September at Polonia airport in Medan, North Sumatra, one of Indonesia's seven major international gateways.

Other major international gateways are the airports in Jakarta; Den Pasar, Bali; Batam island; Surabaya, East Java; Manado, North Sulawesi, and Entikong,West Kalimantan.

The number of tourist arrivals through Polonia reached 18,527 in September this year, representing a 9.2 percent decrease from the same month in 1995.

The drop in September was the forth this year, after a decrease of 19.1 percent in January, 3,9 percent in May and 0.4 percent in August.

The number of tourist arrivals in Indonesia reached 342,604 in September, representing a mere 11-percent year-on-year increase, the slowest pace recorded in seven months. The number of tourist arrivals in the first nine months of 1996 rose by 18.6 percent, compared with the same period last year, to 3,089,997.

The highest growth rates in the January-September period were found at Juanda airport in Surabaya (101.1 percent), Samratulangi airport in Manado (31.2 percent) and Soekarno-Hatta airport in Jakarta (29.5 percent). (icn)