JAKARTA, May 8 (Xinhua) -- Indonesia is scheduled to hold a week-long festival to further promote national trade, tourism and investment in Shanghai, China, slated for May 20 to May 26, a senior official said here on Monday.
The festival, called 2017 Inafest Indonesia Week, would be held in Shanghai's landmark building of Oriental Pearl Tower, to showcase Indonesian products, various national food, cultural attractions and exhibition of the nation's prominent destinations photos, Foreign Marketing Tourism Deputy Minister I Gde Pitana said.
Pitana's deputy for Asia Pacific region, Vincensius Jemadu said the tourism ministry has prepared all materials, including the booth and cultural attraction performers, to take part in the upcoming festival.
Picturesque photos of Indonesia's new 10 destinations have also been prepared for the photo exhibition featured during the festival, he added.
"The promotion activities in the festival is highly expected to increase Indonesian tourism image to the Chinese society, so as to eventually contribute national efforts in boosting up arrivals of foreign visitors to Indonesia, particularly from China," Jemadu said.
Besides for tourism promotion, the festival is also expected to further expand the market for Indonesian products and attract more foreign investors to invest in Indonesia, Jemadu added.
He expected more intensive contacts between Indonesian and Chinese businessmen would be created during the week-long event.
Apart from that, Jemadu said cooperation between Indonesian and Chinese fashion designers and filmmakers would also be addressed as a particular batik fashion show and discussions between Indonesian and Chinese filmmakers would also be featured in the event.
"The discussions would explore the possibilities of Indonesian and Chinese film producers to make movies that feature Indonesia's prominent destinations," Jemadu said.
Addressing the upcoming national festival in China, Indonesian Tourism Minister Arief Yahya said the festival holds an essential task in luring more Chinese potential visitors to Indonesia.
The minister said visitors from China now have dominated foreign visitor arrivals in Indonesia, higher than those came from Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, Japan and South Korea.
He added that Chinese visitors are targeted to contribute half of the nation's foreign visitor target set at 20 million by 2019.
