Belgian royal princess to continue visiting Indonesia despite terror attack

A senior Belgian diplomat said on Friday that Princess Astrid of Belgium would go ahead with her plan to visit Indonesia's capital city and West Java province despite the recent terrorist attacks.

Deputy Chief of Mission at the Belgian embassy Heikki Vandermander said the recent terror attack would not affect Belgium's plan to invest in West Java province.

Heikki said that the princess would bring along 200 Belgian businessmen in her visit to Indonesia.

"Princess Astrid and her entourage would visit Jakarta, Bandung and Bogor. She would be in Bandung from March 17 and 18," Heikki said in West Java province's capital of Bandung, quoted by local media.

Her visit to Bandung was intended to establish economic and investment cooperation with the province.

As terrorist attack can happen in any country, "we have to cooperate to overcome this," Heikki said.

Belgium is interested to invest in textile industry in West Java and has a plan to cooperate with provincial government to develop Bandung into a "smart city" with the help of information, communication and telecommunication technologies.

According to West Java Deputy Governor Deddy Mizwar, the Belgian princess' upcoming visit would be the largest one for the province.

West Java now ranks first among all Indonesian provinces with the largest inflow of investment.

The province attracted about 6.5 billion U.S. dollars of investment in 2015, higher than the targeted figure of 5.7 billion U.S. dollars, said Dadang Masoem, head of the province's investment coordination agency.

"We have set a target to see 101 trillion rupiah (about 7.2 billion U.S. dollars) of investment coming in this year," Dadang said.

According to Dadang, Belgium has invested about 571.6 million U.S. dollars in the province as of now. Enditem