Vietnam could benefit from Bali bombing

Vietnam could benefit from Bali bombing

Agence France-Presse, Hanoi

Vietnam expects to welcome more international tourists in the wake of the devastating bomb blasts on Indonesia's resort island of Bali that rocked Southeast Asia, officials said Monday.

"With a world of so many upheavals, especially after the bomb blasts in Bali, the Philippines and the hostage seizure in Moscow, there is a possibility that more tourists will head to Vietnam", Nguyen Van Tuyet, a spokesman for the Vietnam Tourism Administration, told AFP.

"The country could exceed its target to attract 2.5 million international visitors and 12 million domestic holidaymakers this year."

From January to October, more than 2.17 million tourists visited Vietnam, pouring US$1.27 billion into the communist country's coffers, a 13.3-percent increase over the same period in 2001.

Visitors were most likely to hail from China, Japan, the United States, France or South Korea.

There was also a large increase in visitors from neighboring Southeast Asian states and from European countries, in addition to the traditional French or German tourists.

Vietnam was to establish tourism promotion offices in France and Japan in November and to soon sign an agreement on tourism cooperation with Japan and Malaysia.

The communist state was recently ranked by the Political and Economic Risk Consultancy (PERC) as the safest Asia-Pacific country for business.

A report from PERC said as Vietnam does not have a sizable Islamic population of its own, it would be hard to imagine al- Qaeda -- responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States -- trying to launch any attacks here.

A Southeast Asian terror group with believed ties to al-Qaeda is suspected of involvement in the bombings on Bali, which left nearly 200 mostly foreign tourists dead Oct. 12.

In ten months, Vietnam has licensed 17 foreign-invested tourism projects with a total capital of $133.2 million.