IN AN effort to encourage tourist spending and empower small and medium enterprises (SMEs), the Indonesian government will revise a regulation pertaining to value-added tax (VAT) that would allow foreign tourists to get tax refunds for their spending.

Kasikorn Research Centre expects tourism spending from December 28 to January 1, to be worth about Bt47.43 billion, up 9.3 per cent from the same period of last year.