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Denpasar. The number of British tourists visiting the Indonesian resort island of Bali in the eight months through August rose 10.5 percent over the year-earlier period, an official said on Sunday.

“With the increasing number of British tourists arriving in Bali, Britain ranks eighth on the list of countries sending tourists to Bali,” head of the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) for Bali, Ida Komang Wisnu said.

He said Britain was ranked eighth in tourist arrivals after Australia, Japan, China, Malaysia, South Korea, Taiwan and France.

Wisnu said Britain contributed 58,560, or 3.81 percent, of the total foreign tourist arrivals in Bali, which reached approximately 1.5 million people.

More than 4.61 million foreign tourists visited Indonesia in the first nine months of 2009, up 1.07 percent from the same period last year.

“In September 2009, the number of tourist arrivals was 493,799,” head of the Culture and Tourism Ministry’s data center, Ir Wibowo said last week.

Compared with the same period last year, this shows a slight fall of 1.44 percent in September, he said.

But Wisnu said seven entry points including the Ngurah Rai, Polonia and Sam Ratulangi airports, in Bali, Medan and Manado respectively, saw an increase in the number of tourist arrivals in September.



Antara