Fair targets and realities

With only eight more days to go, it looks as though the Indonesian capital's traditional birthday bash, known as the Jakarta Fair, will have a hard time meeting its set target in terms of both visitor attendance and revenue.

As of Friday, the fair had recorded an attendance of 972,609 visitors over the past 20 days -- up from last year's 847,264 over the same period, officials said, but certainly far short of the 2 million the Jakarta Fair committee had expected would come during the month-long fair.

Nevertheless, not everything has looked so bleak. Budi, a salesperson at a stand displaying South Korean motorcycles, said his company had been able to sell 180 motorcycles over the past 20 days compared with less than 100 over the same period last year. His target is 400 sold by the time the fair closes on Sunday 14 July.

Echoes of Budi's optimism could be heard at other stands as well. After all, the optimistic view salespeople at the fair seems to be taking is that, based on experience, a jump in attendance -- and in sales -- usually occurs during the last few days of the fair.

That may well be so. Nevertheless, the overall statistics so far give no big cause for overoptimism -- unless, of course, an upsurge of visitors does indeed occur around closing day. After all, even if the expected upsurge of visitors does occur, 972,606 is still a far cry from the 2 million targeted.

Moreover, achieving a revenue of Rp 200 billion in total transactions, which the fair organizers have set as a target, is no mean feat, given the prevailing economic circumstances and the high level of unemployment among Indonesians. For many, even the Rp 6,000 entrance ticket is rather steep.

But cost is not the only obstacle that has apparently kept visitor numbers down. Many Indonesians, especially those who do not have the benefit of their own means of transportation, have complained that the site, at the former Kemayoran Airport, is too far.

Given the distance of the current fair site from the city center, an affordable, comfortable and efficient system of public transportation would be the obvious answer. However, providing such a system requires not only money, but hardware and organizational talent as well. Much of that seems to be lacking, not to mention security, which, especially during night hours, leaves much to be desired.

Things used to be rather different during the early years, from 1969 to 1992, when the Jakarta Fair was held on Merdeka Square, in the shadow of the National Monument and in front of the presidential palace. One might have expected, now that the organization of the annual fair has been taken over from the city administration by a commercial organization, the Jakarta International Trade Fair (JITF) owned by businessman Edward Soerjadjaja, things would be better.

It seems, however, that time and conditions are currently in the way of making such hopes a reality, which is a pity. Jakarta certainly deserves to have a trade fair venue of truly international standard as soon as economic conditions permit. If a proper site for such a venue can no longer be made available in the city center, then perhaps a good and truly functional system of public transportation could be put in place to facilitate travel between the site and the city center.

Hopefully the present generation of Indonesians will still be around when Jakarta has proper public facilities worthy of the capital of the largest country in Southeast Asia and the fourth- most populous in the world.