No Christmas spirit for Bali
DENPASAR – There is a hard-hitting editorial in this week’s edition of Bali Update (www.balidiscovery.com) attacking the government-backed Customs clampdown on supplies of alcohol in Bali.
As has been previously reported in TravelMole, onerous new importation regulations and a massive tax hike have led to supplies of alcohol being reduced to a trickle, much to the frustration of hoteliers and restaurant operators, who have had to disappoint their guests by denying them an alcoholic drink.
The drive to limit supplies is coming out of Jakarta and is seen as an attempt to block backdoor marketeers of booze into Bali.
Bali Update says the crackdown is “incredibly wrong-minded and will ultimately prove to be in opposition to the national interests on a number of levelsâ€.
It says the government’s belated attempts to plug the holes in its largely corrupt import systems, which in its heyday facilitated as much as an estimated 75 percent of the nation’s consumption of imported booze, “shamefully bespeaks the high level of bureaucratic collusion that once controlled illegal imports and the government’s long-standing failure to establish an effective import systemâ€.
The editorial goes on, “The current desire to set things right in one swoop is only compounding that earlier failure by deepening the current financial crisis, creating widespread unemployment and even threatening the continued existence of some tourism players as the tourism sector scrambles to find drinks to place on the table of foreign visitors.â€
Bali Update concludes, “We fear that if President Yudhoyono and his cabinet fail to urgently rethink the current situation in such a way that will maintain supply and keep Indonesian tourism competitive, our conference and convention centres will suffer a drought of both booze and visitors in 2009 and beyond.â€
Ian Jarrett
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