TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs Luhut Binsar Panjaitan said some 32,000 people had registered to attend the IMF-World Bank annual meeting in Bali, October 8-15. According to Luhut, the figure exceeded the expectation of the Indonesian government which was 19,000 people.
“The total participants are around 32,000 people, and it’s more than our prediction. The number will likely increase because today is the last [registration day],” said Luhut in a written statement received by Tempo, Friday, October 5.
Luhut mentioned, up to October 3, as many as 12,031 people had registered online via the Meeting Team Secretariat (MTS) of the IMF-WB committee. While through the Indonesia Planning Team, the total registrar amounted to 19,404 people. Thus, the figure would close to 32,000 participants if added from the number of registration of private sectors on October 4.
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With that number of participants, Luhut went on, the event would be the largest IMF-WB meeting in the history.
Luhut further expected the largest number of participants would help to increase the country’s economy, particularly the Bali Province. Based on the National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas) study, Bali’s economic growth would hike by 0.64 percent with 19,000 participants.
“It means, the economic growth is estimated to increase 6.54 percent and that is higher than national economic growth. We also expect the meeting will create job employment up to 32,700 in Bali,” Luhut pinned hope.
Based on the assumption and prediction, Bali would receive more than Rp1.5 trillion from the establishment of the IMF-World Bank annual meeting, as Bappenas projected with the initial participant at 19,000 people.
DIAS PRASONGKO