JAKARTA ~

Indonesia plans to waive visa requirements for citizens from 25 countries in order to promote the growth of tourism.

Minister of Tourism Arief Yahya, after attending a meeting of the Coordinating Ministry of Economic Affairs Monday, said the government will grant visa-free access to four more countries, namely China, South Korea, Russia, and Japan.

“Besides the four countries, we will announce the names of 21 more countries. Most of them are European while some are American countries,” Arief stated.

The visa-free policy is expected to help the government achieve its target of receiving 10 million tourists in 2015 and to boost the state’s revenue from the tourism sector.

Indonesia currently provides visas on arrival for tourists from 15 countries/regions such as Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei Darussalam, Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Hong Kong Special Administration Region, Macau Special Administration Region, Chile, Morocco, Peru, and Ecuador.

The Indonesian Government has set a target to receive 20 million tourists by 2019.

Indonesia recorded 9,435,411 tourist arrivals in 2014, up 7.2 percent from 8,802,129 recorded in 2013.

The number of foreign tourist arrivals from China, South Korea and Japan to Bali has been increasing following the implementation of the visa-free policy, an observer of tourism-related affairs said.

“Since early this year, there has been an upward trend in the number of tourists in Bali from these three countries,” tourism observer Dewa Nyoman Putra stated on Monday.

Hotels in tourist destinations in Bali are predominantly occupied by foreign tourists from the Pacific region. The number of tourists from Japan has also been seen increasing following the implementation of the visa-free policy, he affirmed.

Tourism services in Bali recorded a 30 percent rise in the number of foreign tourists arriving from Japan and China in the January-February period this year. In addition, the number of tourists from South Korea rose by 17 percent.

Chinese tourist arrivals in Bali in the January-February period increased to 145,749, up by 33.71 percent from the 109,003 recorded in the same period last year. This accounted for 22.87 percent of the total of 637,217 foreign tourist arrivals in the same period.

Moreover, the number of tourists from Japan also surged by 32.71 percent from 30,680 the previous year to 40,596, while those from South Korea rose 17.42 percent to 28,528 tourists.

According to Putra, the government had also offered a visa-free visit to tourists from Russia, besides China, Japan and South Korea, at the beginning of the year.

However, the number of Russian tourist arrivals in Bali has yet to show an increase, he noted.