A much-anticipated machinery exhibition, the Indonesia International Machinery Fair (Indomaf) 2010, commenced in Jakarta on Thursday, targeting a total transaction value of Rp 250 billion (US$28 million).

"We hope that this year we can increase the transaction value by 10 or 20 percent from the Rp 220 billion during the *2008* exhibition," said Chong Chong Tik, the managing director of PT Mass Komunikasi, the organizer of the Indomaf.

Thirty-four companies from countries including China, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia were taking part in the exhibition.

Around half of the participants this year are domestic companies, he said.
"We are targeting up to 15,000 visitors this year," Chong said.
Last year's exhibition received 13,825 visitors.

During the exhibition, which runs from Aug. 5 to 8 at the Jakarta International Expo, exhibitor-companies display their latest products in several industrial sectors, including printing, food processing and packaging, and rubber processing.

Chong said Indonesia had a big food industry with a lot of potential, so it needed a huge supply of food processing and packaging machines from China.
"Local machine technology is below that of China," he said.

With more advanced food processing and packaging technology, Indonesia's food producers could increase the quality of their products, he said.

"In China, the cost of producing foods is relatively cheap, but producers can sell their products at high prices because if their products have good packaging," Chong said.
The international exhibition manager from the China Foreign Trade Guangzhou Exhibition Corporation, David Zhao, said this year's exhibition could increase Indonesia's machine imports from China.

"We're very optimistic that Indonesia's machine imports *from China* will increase," he said.
According to the Central Statistic Agency, during the first semester Indonesia's machine imports from China were worth a total $2.3 billion, constituting around one-quarter of its total imports from China. (rdf)