Foreign Exchange From Tourism Decreased 97 Percent Due To The COVID-19 Pandemic

JAKARTA - The COVID-19 pandemic has a broad and deep impact on the tourism industry around the world due to falling demand from domestic and foreign tourists. Indonesia, as one of the countries of choice for tourist destinations, was also affected. As a result of this epidemic, state revenue from tourism also fell free.

Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs and Investment Luhut Pandjaitan said the decline in tourism was caused by the imposition of various travel restrictions by many countries to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

Based on data from the Central Statistics Agency (BPS), said Luhut, in May, it was recorded that tourist trips fell almost 100 percent compared to the previous month. Meanwhile, Bank Indonesia issued data that the decline in foreign exchange impacted on which fell by 97 percent.

"BI also said tourism foreign exchange fell by 97 percent yoy (year on year) from US $ 1,119 million to only US $ 31 million. The decline was tremendous," he said, in a virtual discussion entitled 'Reactivation of the Tourism Sector and Creative Economy Entering Adaptation. The New Normal ', Wednesday 22 July.

Not only that, Luhut said, due to the decline in the number of visits by foreign and domestic tourists, it also affected hundreds of thousands of workers in the tourism sector and the creative economy who lost their jobs.

"More than 180 thousand workers in the tourism sector and the creative economy are feeling the impact. More than 2,000 hotels have their operations shut down," he said.

Luhut explained that this impact then extended to all sectors that were in direct contact with tourism. Such as the decline in demand for raw materials to demand for oil supply.

In order to prevent this situation from continuing in the third quarter, the government is currently taking steps to start strengthening the tourism sector. Luhut said, the government will maximize the capacity of domestic tourists by up to 70 percent.

"Let's together in the third quarter try to do domestic tourists. We try to gradually increase that figure to 70 percent. Indonesia has a very large potential for domestic tourists with 300 million trips every year," he explained.

For your information, the foreign exchange realization from the tourism sector in 2019 reached IDR 280 trillion. Increased from the 2018 achievements of IDR 270 trillion. the economy of the tourism sector contributes to the national GDP by 5.5 percent. The number of workers in this sector is 13 million people.

Last year, the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) recorded that the number of foreign tourist visits to Indonesia was 16.1 million, an increase of only 1.88 percent compared to 2018. As a comparison, last year, the number of foreign tourist arrivals from Thailand reached 39 million. Meanwhile, Malaysia only needed nine months to break the 20 million visits.

No doubt, the government is struggling to improve the performance of the tourism sector. One of them is by creating 10 leading tourism destinations including Lake Toba, Labuan Bajo, and Borobudur Temple. However, that effort stumbled earlier in the year after the outbreak of the corona virus broke out.