Pangkalpinang (ANTARA) – Tourism and Creative Economy Minister Sandiaga Salahudin Uno will include the Food Millennial Festival (FMF) of Pangkalpinang City, Bangka Belitung (Babel) Islands Province, in the 2024 Kharisma Event Nusantara (KEN) to boost tourist visits.”We would like to include this FMF in the next year’s edition of the Karisma Event Nusantara,” the minister stated while attending the 2023 Indonesia Creative Districts/Cities (KaTa Kreatif) workshops in Pangkalpinang, Bangka, Saturday. The KEN constitutes a concrete action of the ministry’s collaborative strategy with regional governments and all tourism stakeholders that aims to promote and elevate Indonesia’s tourism image as well as stimulate the revival of the country’s tourism and creative economy sectors, he remarked. “Currently, the Pangkalpinang Municipal Government is holding the FMF that successfully attracts hundreds of business actors, who run MSMEs (micro, small, and medium enterprises), to attend it. I seek to include this culinary festival in the annual KEN agenda, so that we can promote this FMF event at the national and international levels,” he pointed out. Uno expressed hope that the City of Thousand Smiles’ FMF would be incorporated into the series of the 2024 KEN activities to encourage creative economy business actors to better develop their businesses, which, in turn, will boost tourist visits. “The inclusion of the FMF in the KEN will surely push the related stakeholders to improve the attractiveness of the festival, so that it will appeal to more domestic and international tourists to visit,” Uno noted. Meanwhile, Pangkalpinang Mayor Maulana Aklil warmly welcomed the minister’s idea to include the city’s FMF in the 2024 KEN. “Hopefully, the inclusion of FMF in KEN next year will ascend the level of MSMEs in Babel Islands Province, especially in Pangkalpinang City, and encourage them to continue to make innovation, so that they can expand their networks,” he remarked.

Source: Antara News Agency