Tourist arrivals to Bali fall 64 per cent in November
12/05/2002
Jakarta (dpa) - Only 31,477 foreigners visited Bali in November, down 63.8 per cent from the previous month, as tourists shunned the ;Island of the Gods'' in the wake of a terrorist attack on October 12 that killed at least 190 people, news reports said Thursday.
The arrival figures were provided by Bali International Airport immigration official I Gde Widiartha, said the state-run Antara news agency.
According to government statistics, the Bali blast had an immediate impact on tourist arrivals to the country.
In October, the number of foreign tourists who visited Indonesia dropped 19.5 per cent, to 304,806 arrivals.
In September, some 378,654 foreigners visited Indonesia, according to Central Statistics Agency (BPS) figures.
On the night of October 12, a group of terrorists detonated two powerful bombs on the Legian entertainment strip in Kuta, Bali, killing at least 190 people, the majority of whom were foreign tourists.
The bombs have been blamed on Indonesian Moslem terrorists bent on killing Americans.
The number of foreign tourists arriving in Bali, Indonesia's most popular beach resort, immediately dropped by 44.6 per cent to 86,901 in October, compared with September's figure 156,923.
Overall tourist arrivals during the first 10 months reached 3.57 million people, down 0.3 per cent compared with the same period in 2001.
The World Bank has estimated that if the Bali incident caused a 20 per cent falloff in tourist arrivals, it would shave one per cent off Indonesia's gross domestic product (GDP) this year, and help push two million Indonesians into poverty.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Filed By Matt Drudge
Reports are moved when circumstances warrant
http://www.drudgereportArchives.com for updates
(c)DRUDGE REPORT 2002
Not for reproduction without permission of the author
