JAKARTA, March 2 (Xinhuanet) -- The Indonesian government is casting an appreciative eye toward the increasing number of Chinese traveling overseas for vacation, and hopes to lure some 240,000 Chinese tourists to Indonesia in 2005.

    "We plan to quadruple the number of Chinese tourists visiting Indonesia," State Minister for Culture and Tourism Jero Wacik was quoted Wednesday by The Jakarta Post as saying.

    Jero said the number of outbound tourists from China reached about 20 million last year, but Indonesia was only able to attractsome 80,000 of these tourists.

    To improve on this figure, Jero said the government had recently opened immigration offices in its consulates in Shanghai and Guangzhou, in addition to the immigration office in the Indonesian Embassy in Beijing.

    The government also hopes to cooperate with Singapore, which last year received 700,000 Chinese tourists, in their efforts to bring in more Chinese tourists to the region.

    "We hope that when Chinese tourists are done sight-seeing and shopping in Singapore, they will be interested in continuing on toIndonesia, which has hundreds of tourist attractions for them to visit," Jero said.

    The government hopes to attract 6 million foreign tourists thisyear, who are expected to bring in 6 billion US dollars in foreign exchange revenue.

    Last year, Indonesia attracted some 5.3 million foreign tourists who brought in some 5.3 billion dollars in foreign exchange revenue.

    The Central Statistics Agency (BPS) reported on Tuesday that foreign tourist arrivals dropped slightly to 348,600 in January 2005 from 416,500 in December 2004.

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