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THE INDONESIAN government through the Ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy continues to make full efforts to restore the tourism and creative economy sector amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to the Minister of Tourism and Creative Economy, Sandiaga Uno recently said, even though Indonesian tourism was very negatively affected by the pandemic, he still believed that Indonesia would be able to rise with the various efforts that were being made.
“This pandemic has resulted in foreign exchange falling by 80%, foreign tourists falling freely by 75%, more than 2 million jobs are threatened, and the creative economy which is the mainstay continues to transform towards digitalization,” he said.
He added, even though there was a slight decline, the creative economy was able to sustain a fixed amount of IDR1,134.9 trillion which placed Indonesia as the third highest creative economy contributor in the world after the United States with Hollywood and Korea with K-Pop.
“The Ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy has also prepared and carried out steps to restore tourism and the creative economy. These steps are increasing the capacity of human resources (HR), revitalizing tourism destinations and creative economy infrastructure, increasing business resilience and competitiveness, product and service innovation, as well as market recovery and expansion,” he remarked.
In addition, it is also developing priority tourism destinations, namely 5 super priority tourism destinations consisting of Lake Toba, Borobudur and its surroundings (Yogyakarta and Central Java), Lombok-Mandalika, Labuan Bajo and Manado-Likupang. Then followed by the next 5 priority tourism destinations, namely Bangka-Belitung, Bromo-Tengger-Semeru, Wakatobi, Raja Ampat and Morotai.
“Interestingly, in the midst of the massive development of super priority destinations, we are carrying out micro-scale development, namely tourist villages and more than 1,500 tourist villages that have been registered as part of the locomotive of Indonesia’s economic revival,” Sandiaga noted.
In fact, he continued, in the midst of a pandemic an investment was made. This is the contribution of the realization of tourism investment to the realization of national investment, although it is still relatively low.
“I just witnessed the signing of a cooperation agreement with a large company in the creative economy, namely Paramount, which will invest in Jembrana, Bali. We are touched that in the midst of this pandemic, tourism investments have actually been implemented,” he added.
Admittedly, Tourism Ministry plans to sign a cooperation MoU with the Minister of Investment or the Head of BKPM so that there is an acceleration. This is because the best time right now is to invest as part of a strategy to get up in difficult times. The strategy for developing tourism investment and the creative economy consists of 3 main pillars carried out by Tourism Ministry namely profiling, promotion and advocacy.
“We continue to push for fiscal incentives for investment in the tourism sector because we see the massive number of jobs created, there are 34 million jobs, so we encourage tax allowances, exemption from import duties for investment including yachts (tourism ships), and super deduction tax,” he continued.
Therefore, in the future it is hoped that there will be an increase in the tax base and tax ratio with the expansion of labor-intensive and tourism sectors. If you invest 1 dollar in the tourism sector, it will create almost 6 times more jobs than in other sectors.
“Let’s support the recovery from tourism and the revival of this creative economy with 3G which will be the key to success during the pandemic. 3G namely gercep (moving fast), geber (moving together) and gaspol (working on all potential job opportunities). Don’t let us forget sectors that have not been touched so far and we are working on all the potential to generate job opportunities,” Sandiaga concluded. [beritasatu.com/photo special]
