Tangerang dreams of developing artificial tourism sites

It’s been for years the tourism sector in Tangerang regency that has great potentials to contribute to the regional revenues had remained the same without any meangful changes ever made by the local administration to attract tourists to come.

“Frankly, we always face difficulties to develop tourist sites across the regency because of the budget we receive continues to reduce from year to year,” M. Idris, chief of tourism department at the regental Trade, Industry and Cooperative Agency (Indagkopar) said on Wednesday.

He said the administration only allocated Rp 620 million for tourism sector this year. This is much lower than Rp 950 million it received from the regency budget last year.
He blamed limited allocation of funds from the regency budget as main cause of neglected development in the tourism sector.

“We have been trying to look for funds from other sources by inviting investors and a Korean investors had expressed interests to develop tourism site in Tanjung Pasir Beach resort in Teluk Naga district,” he said.

Unfortunately, investment value offered by the Korean investors was far below the administration expectation because the development of tourism site at Tanjung Pasir needs trillion of funds.

Another problems facing the development of tourism sector is that most of land stretching along the coastal line in the northern part of the regency had been controlled by the Ministry of Forestry and Plantation as well as by the Air Force.

“Therefore, the local administration can not erect any buildings as it likes there,” he said.
He said the agency would focus on developing artificial tourism sites such shopping, cool in air and entertaiment tourism sites in the southern part of the regency instead.

According to Idris, such artificial tourism site was believed to be able to attract more visitors.
Separately, Togu Pardamen Tobing, the chairman of commission B that oversees tourism sector at the regency said that it was not a surprise if tourism sector in the regency remains stagnant because of limited budget.

“However, it does not mean that the administration had not made any breakthroughs in efforts to improve the sector. We just have to go slowly with the development programs,” he said. Multa Fidrus