T

he government revealed on Wednesday a plan to waive visa requirements for 30 more nationalities next year after President Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo recently issued a presidential regulation on visa exemption for tourists coming from 30 more countries.

On Wednesday, Jokowi discussed efforts to boost tourism with Tourism Minister Arief Yahya and representatives of the Indonesian Tourism Promotion Board (BPPI), the Association of Indonesia Tour and Travel Agencies (ASITA) and the Indonesian Hotel and Restaurant Association (PHRI) during a limited Cabinet meeting.

'€œI hope the policy can be extended to 30 new countries in 2016,'€ Arief announced after the meeting on Wednesday at the presidential office. '€œThe visa free [policy] will boost services and our competitiveness. We need to look outward as we compete with other countries.'€

He later cited as an example the way Malaysia and Thailand waived visa requirements for 164 nationalities and Thailand for 56. Under its visa policy imposed without any reciprocity requirement, Malaysia welcomed more than 27 million foreign tourists last year.

Jokowi signed the new presidential regulation on June 9 to ensure that his recent decision to waive visa requirements for 30 nationalities could be implemented, despite an immigration law stipulating that visa exemptions can only be given on a reciprocal basis. With the new policy, the government hopes to attract an additional 500,000 foreign tourists this year, bringing the overall target to 10.5 million tourists.

During the meeting, the President also asked stakeholders for input regarding the second batch of 30 nationalities, said the tourism minister.

According to Arief, the government is considering countries that could bring benefit to Indonesia, for example, India and Saudi Arabia.

The minister later insisted that the government would keep pushing for diplomacy with each of the existing 30 countries to also adopt the reciprocity principal for Indonesians.

'€œI believe reciprocity will be fully implemented [by the 30 countries] within three years,'€ he said, pointing out that Japan and China had signaled that they may give the idea the nod.

The 2011 Immigration Law stipulates that visa exemptions can only be made on a reciprocal basis and on a principle of benefit, a provision that seemed to hamper its implementation. Previously, the planned exemption policy for the 30 nationalities was set to be implicated in April, bringing the total number of qualifying nationalities 45 as 15 other countries already enjoyed visa-free facilities.

Under the new regulation, tourists will be issued 30-day stay permits that cannot be extended or converted into any other type of visa.

Only immigration units located at five airports and four ports are allowed to issue visa exemptions, for example, those at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Jakarta, Ngurah Rai International Airport in Bali and Kualanamu International Airport in Medan, North Sumatra.

The meeting also concluded that the tourism ministry needed to increase promotion, particularly campaigns related to the free-visa policy and packages for cross-border tourism.

'€œIn promoting the packages for cross-border tourism, we are targeting, for example, the 1.7 million expatriates in Singapore and 8 million non-ASEAN tourists going to Singapore. It is now easier for them to transit to Indonesia,'€ Arief said.

This year, the government allocated Rp 1.2 trillion for promotions.

BPPI chairwoman Wiryanti Sukamdani said she was optimistic the target could be reached if all stakeholders and relevant government institutions worked together.

'€œThe cross-border package is the easiest [method to attract tourists],'€ she said, adding that the BPPI had proposed several programs to boost tourism, like establishing a convention agency and hosting big international events.