Indonesia export expo ends with $59m in deals

JAKARTA (JP): The 1998 Indonesian Export Products exhibition at the Jakarta Fairground ended on Sunday without fanfare but with deals signed worth US$58.9 million.

The robust trade recorded by the exhibition's organizing committee contrasted with what many exhibitors said they experienced during the five-day exhibition.

Many said they recorded only a few transactions or none whatsoever. They said they could not sell their products because foreign buyers found exhibited products more expensive than they had expected.

The National Agency for Export Development under the Ministry of Industry and Trade, which organized the exhibition, said that the transaction value could rise further because not all the deals had yet been reported to the organizing committee.

He predicted that the final total could reach $70 million, a sharp increase on the $56.5 million recorded at last year's event.

The most popular products this year were furniture, worth US$16.8 million, or about 28.5 percent of the total transactions, followed by handicraft products worth US$10.7 million (18.2 percent).

Other highly traded products included plastics and glass valued at US$8.5 million (14.4 percent), textile and garments, worth US$4.3 million (7.3 percent), and metal and components worth US$3.6 million (6.1 percent).

More than 3,000 foreign buyers from 97 countries visited the exhibition by Saturday. Of the total, 631 came from Western European, 473 from the Middle East, 336 from Southeast Asia, 168 from East Asia, 139 from North Africa, and the rest from North America, Australia, Southern Africa and Latin American.

The visitors consisted of both individual businesspeople and members of trade delegations.

Gusmardi said that buyers from the Netherlands signed the most deals, worth $8 million or 13.7 percent of all transactions, followed by Indonesian agents ($5.8 million) buyers from Saudi Arabia ($5.2 million), Jordan ($3.2) and Germany ($3.1 million)

Other nations' buyers who had concluded transactions as of Saturday included Egypt, Spain, the United States, Singapore, France, Japan, Yemen, Denmark, Britain, Algeria, Malaysia, the Philippines and Italy.

Gusmardi said some foreign buyers sought products not available at the exhibition, such as plywood, cement and tires.

He said next year's Indonesian export product expo would be held at the same venue from Oct. 20 through Oct. 24. (29)