RUSSIAN TOURISTS TO BALI UP 5.53 PCT

Denpasar, July 12 (ANTARA) - A total of 28,829 Russians visited Bali in the year ended May, a 5.53 percent increase from the same period a year earlier.

"Russia ranked ninth among the 10 top countries in terms of tourist arrivals in the Island of Paradise," Head of the Bali Provincial Office of the Central Statistics Board (BPS) Ida Komang Wisnu said here on Sunday.

Wisnu said the Russian tourists accounted for 3.31 percent of the total tourist arrivals in Bali in the first five months of 2009.

Data from the office show 870,029 foreign tourists visited the resort island in the January-May 2009 period, up 9.76 percent from the same period last year when the figure was 792,657.

Australia took the lead with 137,018 tourists, followed by Japan 132,122, China 85,828, Malaysia 58,192 and South Korea 52,311.

Taiwan ranked sixth with 48,168 tourists, followed by France 37,256, Britain 29,215, and Germany 26,881. The remaining 234.209 came from other countries.

Last year, 1,989,850 foreign tourists visited Bali, an increase of 19.40 percent from the year before when the figure was 1,668,531.

Bali is one of Indonesia's main tourist destinations.

Indonesia had earlier set itself a target of attracting 8 million foreign visitors for this year.

But the global economic downturn caused the country to revise downward its initial target to 6.5 million for this year.

Overseas tourist arrivals in Indonesia rose 13.2 percent to 6.23 million in 2008 from a year earlier.***5***