Following the excellent experience at TAIPEI 2023 (see article), the Correos philatelic service decided in 2024 to return to Asia to market and promote Spanish philately at another major exhibition; in this case in Indonesia, at the JAKARTA 2024 Asian International Stamp Exhibition.
JAKARTA 2024, together with CHINA 2024, to be held in Shanghai in November, are the two international exhibitions of Asian philately included in the 2024 calendar of the FIAP (Federation of Inter-Asian Philately).
The Jakarta exhibition was held from Wednesday July 3rd to Sunday 7th at the Pos Bloc, an elegant Art Deco building by Dutch architect JF van Hoytema built in 1913, which housed Jakarta’s main post office during the Dutch colonial era. In 2021 Pos Indonesia, the country’s postal administration, decided to transform the building into a cultural centre, hosting events and performances surrounded by cafés and restaurants.
The organisers had planned to set up the exhibition and the commercial fair in the large central hall of the building. But at some point however, someone made the mistake of planning this philatelic event to coincide with a large itinerant cultural festival and book fair, which took up most of the available space. The stamp fair was therefore moved to the back of the large hall, within a very small area, and the exhibition was split between a difficult to access mezzanine in the same building and an area on the first floor of the nearby postal centre.
The complaints do not end there. To promote the event, Pos Indonesia had announced the daily issue of a special mini sheet, five in total. Although the print run of each sheet was 1000 copies, only about 150 sheets were offered for sale each day at the exhibition to the, first surprised and then angry visitors. These quickly sold out, as the remainder had been sold in advance to philatelic agents and dealers.
There’s more… At an international exhibition, with many visitors from different countries and without access to a public wifi network, Pos Indonesia had the “brilliant” idea of requiring payment for the philatelic products on sale at its stand exclusively through its own app, PosPay. Fortunately, after several hours of chaos and general anger among visitors, Pos Indonesia allowed other payment options.
These are just some of the oddities of this event. Moving now to our field of collecting Correos – Spain Post was one of only three postal administrations or philatelic services present at Jakarta 2024 with its stand, always crowded with visitors. The other two were Laos and of course Indonesia. Other small administrations from the region were supposedly represented by local philatelic dealers and were simply useful for filling in the philatelic passport published for this event.
As in Taipei 2023, the Correos philatelic service released a commemorative ATM issue for Jakarta 2024, and for the first time announced the printing of a special gift strip (see video).
This special design depicts the exhibition logo and an image of Wisma 46, a 46-storey skyscraper built in the BNI City Complex, Jakarta’s financial centre. When completed in 1996 it was the tallest building in Indonesia.
Following on from the designs for Essen (article and VARIABLE 49) and Macao (article and VARIABLE 50) in 2018, Paris in 2019 (article and VARIABLE 55), and Taipei in 2023 (article), the issue for Jakarta is the fifth international ATM issue released by Correos.