Tourism to play important role: BPS
Tourism to play important role: BPS
JAKARTA (JP): Based on the growth of the tourism industry over
the past five years, the Central Bureau of Statistics (BPS) is
expecting the sector to play an increasingly important role in
the country's economy.
The bureau's chairman, Sugito Suwito, said yesterday that the
number of tourist arrivals increased by an average of 19.72
percent per annum between 1990 and 1995, while the country's
revenues from their spending rose 26.67 percent a year.
"In 1990, there were 2.17 million foreign tourists visiting
the country with total spending of US$2.1 billion. In 1995, the
number of tourist arrivals rose by 98.58 percent to 4.32 million,
while spending rose 148.34 percent to $5.22 billion,"
he said at a three-day Regional Seminar on Tourism Statistics at
the office of the Ministry of Tourism, Post and
Telecommunications.
He underlined the government's hope of making the tourism
industry the country's largest foreign exchange earner in the
2000s, replacing the oil and gas sector.
Last year, Indonesia earned $9.43 billion from the oil and gas
sector, $5.58 billion from textile exports and $4.57 billion from
timber exports.
Realizing that the price of oil has steadily declined and that
the markets for textiles and timber show little promise, the
government is promoting the tourist industry.
About 6.5 million foreign tourists are expected to visit the
country in 1998, spending more than $8.9 billion.
The government has also been committed to attracting at least
11 million tourists to visit Indonesia with total spending of $15
billion in 2005.
The seminar, which was officially opened yesterday by Minister
of Tourism, Post and Telecommunications Joop Ave, was attended by
dozens of officials from various nations, and experts from the
World Tourism Organizations (WTO), which groups 46 countries.
Chief of the ministry's research and development center,
Koenmiarto, said that the seminar, jointly held by WTO and the
ministry, covers two geographical areas -- the East Asia and
Pacific region and the South Asia region.
The seminar, scheduled to conclude tomorrow, has attempted to
provide opportunities for the attendants to exchange information
on the methodologies used for their tourism statistics, to
evaluate the degree of comparability of their methodologies with
international standards and to identify ways and means of
improving current tourism statistics and their comparability at
the regional and international levels.
A number of WTO experts -- including Enzo Paci, the chief of
statistics and market research, Douglas C. Frechtling, a
professor at George Washington University, and Alan Pisarski, an
international transportation and tourism policy consultant, spoke
at the seminar.(icn)