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ermany-based exhibition company Deutsche Messe AG, through its subsidiary Hannover Fairs International, will open the Indonesia Convention Exhibition (ICE) center, which, it is claimed, will be Indonesia'€™s largest convention and exhibition hall, in 2015.

Hannover Fairs International signed a contract on Tuesday with PT Indonesia International Expo (IIE) and Media Sinar Global, to establish a joint venture, PT Deutsche Messe Venue Operations Indonesia, to operate ICE in BSD City in South Tangerang, Banten.

Hannover Fairs International will hold a 51 percent stake in the joint venture.

'€œA key objective to our foreign strategy is to grow our expertise as an operator of exhibition facilities abroad, and Indonesia offers the ideal prerequisites for expanding our trade-show business: the economy there continues to grow, the international industry is actively involved and the investment climate remains stable,'€ said Andreas Gruchow, member of the managing board at Deutsche Messe AG.

IIE is a collaboration between the Sinarmas Land Group and the Kompas Gramedia Group.

IIE president director Danny Budiharto said that he expected the venue to be on a par with other international exhibition centers in the Asian region through the cooperation with one of the 10 biggest exhibition organizers in the world.

'€œWith a total investment of Rp 3.8 trillion [US$326.8 million], we believe our investment will not only benefit us, but also the city, which currently has only two convention centers namely the Jakarta Convention Center and JIEXPO in Kemayoran [Central Jakarta],'€ he said.

'€œWe hope that this will also help boost the growth of the MICE [meetings, incentives, conventions and exhibitions] business in Indonesia.'€

Neighboring countries have already established substantial facilities to support their MICE industry.

Singapore has the 120,000-square-meter Marina Bay Sands, Thailand has the 140,000-square-meter IMPACT convention hall in Bangkok, China has the 300,000-square-meter Shanghai New International Expo Center (SNIEC) in Shanghai.

Danny said that the increasing number of exhibitions, conferences and both national and international events had outpaced the capacity of existing venues to accommodate such world-class events.

Currently still under construction, ICE sits on a 22-hectare site, with a total building area of 200,000 square meters.

ICE will offer 50,000 square meters of hall space and a 50,000-square-meter open-air display space, as well as a convention center offering 4,000 square meters of floor space.

The government is keen to see the development of such facilities to boost the domestic MICE industry, which is still largely untapped, according to Tourism and Creative Economy Minister Mari Elka Pangestu.

'€œICE will add 25 percent more to our exhibition and convention space and it will have the largest convention area,'€ she said.

'€œPromoting MICE is something that we are prioritizing in our special-interest tourism programs, because we see the value of increasing tourism through MICE both for international and domestic visitors,'€ she added.

Deutsche Messe has been active in Indonesia since 1985, two years before it established a representative office in Jakarta.