Menparekraf Sandiaga Uno: Foreign Tourist Visits Drop 74.7 Percent In 2020

Minister of Tourism and Creative Economy Sandiaga Uno. (Photo: Instagram @sandiuno)

JAKARTA - The Ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy (Kemenparekraf) revealed that the visit of foreign tourists (tourists) in 2020 decreased significantly to 74.7 percent. This is inseparable from the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic which has limited community activities.

As is known, due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in almost all countries in the world, each country including Indonesia has imposed restrictions on access to and from their country. This has caused the tourism sector to take a deep hit.

The Minister of Tourism and Creative Economy (Menparekraf), Sandiaga Salahuddin Uno, said that the total number of foreign tourists visiting by the end of the year is estimated to reach 4 million people with foreign exchange worth 3.54 billion US dollars. This figure did not reach the target set at US $ 4.9 billion.

Furthermore, Sandi said, when compared to the previous year that figure had decreased by 74.7 percent. In 2019, foreign tourist visits reached 16.1 million people with foreign exchange of 16.9 billion US dollars.

Not only that, Sandi said, the movement of domestic tourists (wisnus) is also predicted to decline drastically. This year, it is projected that a total movement of 198 million movements is projected, down 29.7 percent from 2019 with a total movement of 282 million.

"We want the 2021 narrative to be more optimistic, positive, so that tourism and the creative economy can rise up because they have a strategic role and extraordinary leverage," he said at the Year-End Press conference in Jakarta, Tuesday, December 29.

Even so, said the Prabowo pair in the 2019 Presidential Election, the tourism sector and the creative economy were still able to contribute to the total national gross domestic product (GDP) by 4 percent.

Meanwhile, specifically for the added value of the creative economy, it is projected to be worth IDR 1,050 trillion, with a projected export value of 15.06 billion US dollars.

The former Deputy Governor of DKI Jakarta said that the tourism sector and the creative economy had felt the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, around 1.42 million parecraf jobs this year have been hit hard by the pandemic.

The number of workers in this sector cites data from the Ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy as much as 32.76 million people. Consisting of 13.97 million workers in the tourism sector and 18.76 million in the creative economy sector.

"If we look at it, the tourism sector and the creative economy are very extraordinary in terms of their strategic role to encourage a powerful economic leverage," he said.