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)