July 2009: Foreign tourists to Indonesia increasing

The Central Board of Statistics (BPS) said the number of foreign tourist arrivals in July 2009 reached 593.4 thousand people, an increase of 4.59 percent as compared with that in July 2008 which stood only at 567.4 thousand.

"The July 2009 figure is also higher than that a month earlier," BPS chief Rusman Heriawan said here on Tuesday.

The BPS recorded that the number of foreign tourist arrivals in the January-July 2009 period stood at 3.56 million.

Heriawan said that the increase in the number of foreign tourists negated doubts that the number of foreign tourists would drop after the July 17 twin bombings of JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels in Jakarta.