If, like the editor of TravelMole last week, you spent half an hour or more queuing up in a stuffy arrivals hall at Denpasar’s Ngurah Rai airport to pay a US$25 visa fee, you can console yourself that you are helping the Indonesian economy. In no small way.
Bali Update (www.balidisovery.com) has revealed that visa-on-arrival revenues collected from foreign visitors at Bali’s airport during the month of May 2010 equaled US$4 million, a record amount in any month since the new visa facility was introduced.
For the first four months of 2010 a total of US$18.5 million dollars was been collected in visa fees from inbound tourists to Bali, according to Ronald L. Torupan, an economic analysis from the Denpasar office of Bank Indonesia.
Bali Update attributes the higher collections to a number of causes, including:
– The steady growth in arrivals from the Americas and Europe, while growth in ASEAN arrivals have no effect on visa revenues due to ASEAN’s visa-free status for Indonesia.
– The elimination of the lower US$10 fee for one week stays, with all nationals eligible for a visa-on-arrival now compelled to pay a flat US$25 fee.
– The elimination of malfeasance in the collection of visa fees following the exposure in 2009 of the large scale theft of visa fees by immigration officials at Bali’s airport.
