Colombia saw a 10.4% increase in foreign visitors in 2009 compared to the year before, the country's president, Alvaro Uribe, announced on Wednesday.
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"This morning we received a report from the Immigration Office about the number of foreign visitors who arrived in Colombia by airplane. Last year, in December alone, 142 thousand more arrived. Throughout the whole year 1.324 million, 10.4% more than in 2008, arrived," the president was quoted on his website.
"This does not include the cruise ships from the Caribbean, or people who enter the country overland," Uribe added.
While Uribe claimed that tourism worldwide had dropped "nine to ten percent," figures by the United Nations World Tourism Organization record a drop of 4%.
