Tourism may become largest forex earner

JAKARTA (JP): The government predicts that the tourist industry will be the country's largest foreign exchange earner by the end of the Sixth Five Year Development Plan period in 1999, five years ahead of the previous prediction.

Minister of Tourism, Post and Telecommunications Joop Ave told reporters after a hearing yesterday with Commission V of the House of Representatives, for tourist and transportation, that he believed the estimation is based on the growth of the tourism industry over the past few years, compared with the export growth of oil and gas, textiles and timber, the country's current largest foreign exchange earners.

The government is committed to attracting at least 11 million tourists to Indonesia per annum, with total spending of $15 billion by 2005.

Data from the Central Bureau of Statistics show that the number of tourist arrivals increased by an average of 19.72 percent per annum between 1990 and 1995, while the country's revenue from their spending rose 26.67 percent a year.

In 1990, 2.17 million foreign tourists visited the country, spending $2.1 billion. In 1995, the number of tourist arrivals rose by 98.58 percent to 4.32 million, while spending rose to $5.22 billion.

The data also show that the tourist industry rose from the fifth largest non-oil foreign exchange earner in 1995 to third in 1992. In 1985, the tourist industry, with foreign exchange revenue of $525 million, ranked fifth behind timber with revenue of $1.19 billion, rubber with $726 million, textiles with $559 million and coffee with $556 million.

Last year, Indonesia earned $9.43 billion from the exports of oil and gas, $5.58 billion from textiles and $4.57 billion from timber.

About 6.5 million foreign tourists are expected to visit the country in 1998, spending more than $8.9 billion.

The published foreign exchange revenue from the tourist industry, however, is a gross figure which must be cut by about 50 percent to compensate for the spending of Indonesians traveling abroad.

Data from the International Monetary Fund, compiled by the research and development agency of the Ministry of Tourism, Post and Telecommunications show that Indonesia received a net revenue of $1.96 billion from 3.06 million visitors who spent a total of $3.27 billion in the country in 1992.

Indonesians going abroad in 1992 were estimated to spend $1.31 billion in foreign countries.

The data for 1993 was 3.4 million tourist arrivals spending $3.27 billion. Total foreign exchange earned from the tourist industry in 1993 exceeded $2.39 billion, while Indonesians going abroad in that year spent an estimated $1.59 billion.

In 1994, 4.06 million foreign tourists visited the country spending $4.78 billion. But the country is estimated to get a net revenue of only $2.88 billion because there were about two million Indonesians going overseas, spending some $1.9 billion that year. (icn)