Director General for Tourism Marketing and Promotion, Thamrin B. Bachri recently disclosed that Parliament had agreed to allocate a budget of Rp. 158 billion for international tourism marketing 2007 spending, of which Rp. 20 billion is earmarked to  promote five priority destinations for 2007, reports Erwin Nurdin for Bisnis Indonesia. The five priority regions are West Sumatra, North Sulawesi, South Sulawesi, West Nusatenggara and East Nusatenggara, that support the promotion of Bali and Yogyakarta. 
Despite the fact that the Marketing budget for the Department has increased 44%  from the Rp. 110 billion obtained last year, this amount is still far from the minimum requirement of Rp. 600 billion that Indonesia needs to be able to compete internationally, said Thamrin. “Nonetheless, we will strive to achieve the targeted 5.5 million international arrivals this year”.
In the latest development, Culture and Tourism Minister Jero Wacik, on Monday, 22 January installed Surya Dharma as the new Director to head the newly formed Directorate of  Meetings, Conventions, Incentives and Exhibitions (MICE), in the Directorate General of Tourism Marketing and Promotion. The new Directorate is tasked to increase conventions and meetings by 50% in 2007, to reach 300 this year, said Minister Wacik. This is up from some 200 conventions held in 2006 in Indonesia’s main conventions destinations of Jakarta, Bali and Yogyakarta.

In his first comments as Director for Meetings, Incentives, Conventions and Exhibitions, Surya Dharma said that his immediate action will be to improve present MICE potentials in the country, before actively plunging into international promotion and marketing. Before this, Surya Dharma held the position of Chief of the Sub-Directorate for Tourism Investments.