Banjarmasin, South Kalimantan (AntaranewsKalsel) - The municipal government of Banjarmasin builds a creative souvenir center just beside a flyover on Jalan A Yani Km 4,5.
The Creative Sasirangan Center as it is named takes place right at the former office of Indonesian Red Cross (PMI) with funds sourced from the National Creativity Agency or Badan Kreativitas Nasional.
According to the Head of Cooperative, Small and Medium Enterprises, and Manpower Agency Priyo Eko, the city government will get a grant of budget amount Rp3,2 billion to build the souvenir center.
"The municipal government only receives the key, while the auction and the construction are of the National Creativity Agency, but we can supervise the construction," Priyo said here on Wednesday.
"There are two big buildings up there, we hope there will be many local SMEs that sell the typical product, not only batik sasirangan," he said.
Indeed, he said, the location is devoted to promoting batik sasirangan which is a typical batik of South Kalimantan, so it goes national.
"But later we will build again so that other local products can also be sold, to make it the complete center of typical souvenirs of the region," he explained.
Because, said Priyo, currently there is no special place that is big for typical souvenir products and can be a tourist area, making it difficult for tourists to buy souvenirs to bring home.
He said, the construction of the souvenir center is going on and planned to be on an operation by the year 2018.
"When the sales of typical souvenirs are scattered, our hope they will be centered, as in other tourist cities in Indonesia, to be a major tourist attraction," he explained.
In addition, Priyo said, in this place will grow new entrepreneurs. Exactly as Mayor H Ibnu Sina targets up to 2021 as many as 2,500 new entrepreneurs are created.
"Currently, there are hundreds of new entrepreneurs managed by the city government. with the Sasirangan Creative Center will grow even more, which of course SME's products grow there," he said.