Tourist arrivals rise 18%

Tourist arrivals rise 18%

SINGAPORE (Dow Jones): Tourist arrivals in Singapore edged 18 percent higher in June from a year earlier, and for the first six months of 1999 were up 8.9 percent compared with the same period in 1998, the Singapore Tourism Board said Tuesday.

Arrivals in June totaled 574,825, the board said.

At 125,074, most visitors in June came from Indonesia, up 61 percent on the year. Visitors from Japan were down 0.2 percent, at 65,457; and from Malaysia down 1.4 percent, at 43,083, the board said.

For the year through June, the top markets sending visitors to Singapore were: Indonesia, with 601,276, up 30 percent from the same period a year earlier; Japan, with 390,601, up 0.2 percent; and Malaysia, with 246,024, down 9.2 percent, the board said.

Altogether, there were nearly 3.33 million tourist arrivals in the first six months of 1999, up 8.9 percent on year, it said.