REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA -- Tourism in Indonesia grew by 7.2 percent in 2014, well above the global tourism growth of 4.7 percent and the Asia-Pacific tourism growth of 5 percent, according to the Tourism Ministry.

"Even though we have greater potential in tourism, we can see that tourist arrivals in our neighboring countries reached 20 million. We feel challenged and determined to be ahead of them," Tourism Minister Arief Yahya said here on Wednesday.

According to a UN-WTO report, the number of global tourists grew by 4.7 percent to 1.13 billion in 2014.

More than 9.43 million tourists visited Indonesia last year, a 7.2 percent increase from that the previous year, data from the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) revealed.

"With the upward trend of national and global tourism, we are optimistic that our target of 20 million tourist arrivals in the country in 2019 can be achieved," Yahya affirmed.

Towards that end, various efforts have been made, particularly to improve tourism infrastructure, besides information and communication technology (ICT), health facilities, hygiene, accessibility and regulations, the minister noted.

"Improvements in infrastructure will, hopefully, raise the competitiveness of our tourism sector at the global level," he remarked.

Indonesia now ranks 70th in terms of competitiveness, a rating that is expected to jump to the 30th position in the years to come.

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