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ajor property developer Alam Sutera Realty hopes that the expansion of the landmark Garuda Wisnu Kencana (GWK) cultural park in Bali, set to be completed in late 2017, will give a significant boost to the company'€™s future recurring income.

Alam Sutera '€” which saw its net profits nearly wiped out along the year as a result of industrial slowdown and high currency exposure '€” would see its recurring income at least double by 2018 following the expansion of the GWK park, corporate secretary Vincent Sjahbana said.

The park would contribute Rp 400 to Rp 500 billion (US$30 million-37 million) in following years, Vincent said. '€œCurrently, we welcome around one million visitors annually to GWK, with entrance fees set at $4 per person,'€ he explained.

'€œOnce the statue is completed, we will be able to increase the number of visitors to 3 million per year and raise the fee to $10 per entry,'€ he continued.

In 2013, Alam Sutera took over and resumed construction of a statue in the park designed to be Indonesia'€™s tallest statue and a new cultural icon for Bali. The project had been stalled for 16 years on regime changes and internal turf wars.

According to a previous report, the statue will be 126 meters high, including the pedestal, and is located in a 60-hectare plot of land. A number of prominent international and national-scale events have been held in the compound, which Vincent said could hold 55,000 visitors at a time.

With the new fees and visitors, the company could see its revenue from GWK rise to around nine times the current figure, boosting the company'€™s recurring income by more than twice this year'€™s estimated figure. The company, according to its public expose document, expects its recurring income to hit Rp 364 billion this year, an around 18 percent increase from the Rp 308 billion it generated last year.

Alam Sutera'€™s recurring income contributed around 8.5 percent to the company'€™s 2014 revenue, which stood at Rp 3.63 trillion.

'€œWe realize that our recurring income is still relatively small. However, by late 2017 or early 2018, we are going to see a significant increase in our fixed income,'€ Vincent said.

'€œApart from the contribution from GWK, we will also see the contracts of most of our tenants at Alam Sutera Mall expire at the end of 2017 and will raise the fees significantly in the next leasing contracts. We are struggling this year because we have yet to raise the fees as they are still on five-year contracts.'€

Some new tenants at the company'€™s flagship mall in Tangerang, he went on, had been imposed with new tariffs ranging from Rp 200,000 to Rp 500,000 per square meter. According to an official document, by the end of 2014, the average rental fee at Alam Sutera Mall was Rp 94,000 per square meter.

Alam Sutera is keen to boost its recurring income after its net profits plummeted by 92 percent to Rp 62.58 billion in the first nine months of the year, compared with Rp 818.92 billion in the same period last year, as the company suffered devastating losses on foreign exchange as a result of its large amount of dollar-denominated bonds.

The company'€™s revenue slipped from Rp 2.82 trillion in the Jan.-Sept. period last year to Rp 2.17 trillion this year amid a challenging property market on tight regulations and economic slowdown.