Seeing The Impact Of The Cessation Of Flights To And From China

Passengers at Bali Ngurah Rai Airport. (Irfan Meidianto / VOI)

JAKARTA - The Ministry of Transportation officially suspended flights to and from China which took effect from Wednesday, February 4 in the early hours of 00.00 WIB until an indefinite time limit. This was done as an effort to anticipate the government to prevent the spread of the corona virus.

The Ministry of Transportation is conducting an inventory related to the impacts caused by the delay of the aircraft. Economist of the Institute for Development of Economics and Finance (INDEF) Bhima Yudhistira sees that there are concerns that it will impact Indonesia in terms of the growth of foreign tourists.

"The growth of foreign tourists in 2020 is expected to be negative. Data for 2019, the growth of foreign tourists is only 1.8 percent, down from 12.5 percent in the previous year. Because Indonesia relies on foreign tourists from China, when flights are cut, the total number of foreign tourists will drop," explained Bhima. told VOI, Wednesday 5 February.

Tourists from China were the third most visited Indonesia last year. According to data from the Central Statistics Agency (BPS), foreign tourists from China totaled 2.07 million visits or 12.86 percent of the total foreign tourists visiting the country in 2019.

Bhima added, another impact is that the tourism sector will be sluggish, and that will trigger a surge in non-performing loans (NPL), especially in Bali and Lombok. Then, he continued, regional income and tax revenue fell, mass layoffs in the hotel sector, restaurants and shopping centers.

"The tourism foreign exchange that was previously relied on to replace the reduced export revenue is now problematic," he said.

Furthermore, said Bhima, investment that relies on capital and foreign workers (TKA) from China will be hampered by its realization. "For example, the fast train project and the nickel smelter in Morowali are prone to experiencing a decline in operations because foreign workers have difficulty entering Indonesia. The impact on the total realization in 2020 will be lower," explained Bhima.

Meanwhile, tourism observer from the Bandung Tourism College (STP) Haryadi Darmawan Haryadi added that the suspension of flights to and from China would have a short-term impact such as a decrease in the number of tourists because in terms of quantity the number of tourists from the bamboo curtain country is one of the largest.

"Indeed, the quantity of Chinese tourists is large, but this can be an opportunity to get quality tourists (tourists with large expenditures). In general, tourists from Europe, the Middle East and Russia," said Haryadi.

For information, BPS noted that foreign tourist visits to Indonesia reached 16.11 million throughout 2019. This figure missed the Ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy's target of 18 million visits. The figure of 18 million visits is a revision of the previous target of 20 million foreign tourists.

"When compared to 2018, there was a slight increase of 1.82 percent from 15.81 million visits, so we still have homework to continue to increase the arrival of foreign tourists to Indonesia," said Head of BPS Suhariyanto in Jakarta, Monday, February 3.

The number of foreign tourists visiting consists of 9.83 million foreign tourists visiting through the airport entrance, 4.16 million sea port entrances, and 2.11 million land road entrances.

As for 2019, foreign tourists who came from the American region had the highest percentage increase, amounting to 14.16 percent compared to the same period the previous year. Meanwhile, foreign tourists visiting from Asia other than ASEAN had the largest percentage decline, amounting to 10.3 percent.

Meanwhile, according to nationality, the most foreign tourists visiting Indonesia during 2019 came from Malaysia with 2.98 million visits (18.51 percent), followed by China with 2.07 million visits (12.86 percent), Singapore 1.93 million visits (12.01 percent), Australia 1.39 million visits (8.61 percent), and Timor Leste 1.18 thousand visits (7.32 percent).