“Bali Declaration” Reject The Visa-Fee Policy

The five days intensive workshop of Bali’s tourism stakeholders ended Friday 18 July agreed to make a declaration to reject the implementation of the President decree number 18/2003 which announces the proposal for paying fee for visa for foreigners to visit Indonesia.

The declaration, known as “Bali Declaration” stated that the Bali’s tourism stakeholders comprises of tourism businessman, academic; governments and NGO strongly reject the President Decree of 18/2003 because the implementation of visa-fee will certainly disrupt the program of tourism recovery. The recovery program put forward by government and private sector following the Bali bombing 12 October 2002 to help industries to be able to cope with the crisis.
The participants of the tourism workshop claimed that since the recovery program put forward, no much have been done to help Indonesian tourism in general and Bali tourism in particular. On contrary, central government proposed a fee-visa for visitor to come to Indonesia. The amount of visa fee has not been decided, but rumor spread around the cost would be US$35, almost the same amount that must be paid by Indonesians to go to other country like United State, Australia, Japan.
In the workshop that held by The Research Center of Tourism and Cultural of Udayana University, participant said that the proposed of visa-fee came at the wrong time, making the competitiveness of Indonesia or Bali as tourist destination weaken against other like Thailand and Fiji in the region.
The rejection of fee-visa proposal has been rejected by various groups from various regions like Batam, Jakarta, but Central government highly likely refused to review the decree. This is the reason why stakeholders in tourism of Bali decided to make declaration, which will be handed down to local parliament and Bali Governor. (BTN/04)