Indonesia’s foreign tourist arrivals up 16% in August

Reuters: Indonesia attracted 944,455 foreign tourists in August, up 16.14% from a year earlier, the statistics bureau said.

The rate of growth slipped from 20.13% in July.

The total number of visitors in August, including those passing through Indonesia’s borders from neighbouring countries and foreign workers with permits for less than one year, was 1.03 million, up 13.19% from a year ago.

Indonesia has been attracting growing numbers of Chinese visitors.

The government wants to expand tourism to help reduce the economy’s reliance on exports of raw commodities.

It aims to attract 20 million visitors a year by 2019, more than double last year’s 9.73 million.