Overseas buyers placed orders for nearly 4 billion yuan (US$519 million) worth of culture-related products at the Third China (Shenzhen) International Cultural Industry Fair (ICIF), organizers said yesterday when the four-day fair closed.

"As of 12 p.m. today, overseas buyers have placed orders worth 3.98 billion yuan," Guo Yonghang, director general of the office of the organizing committee of the ICIF, told a press conference at Shenzhen Convention and Exhibition Center yesterday afternoon.

While the total value of orders placed by overseas participants at the ICIF is not available yet, Guo said the figure would be "certainly higher" than that of last year.

Over 9,500 experts from overseas participated in the fair, nearly three times the number of the last fair.

A delegation from Turin in Italy signed a deal worth 300 million euro with West China's Gansu Province to make a TV series and a TV and video town project, said Guo.

Some 450 overseas jobseekers were at an employment fair organized by the ICIF, he said.

Ye Jianqiang, managing director of the China (Shenzhen) International Cultural Industry Fair Co. Ltd., revealed that ICIF organizers were talking with German company Sindelfingen Exhibition Ltd. on holding the ICIF in Europe.

"We have always been trying to make the fair more international," he said.

A total of 1.7 million people participated in the ICIF. The total transactions reached before 12 p.m. yesterday was up 70 percent from a year before, including 58 projects valued at more than 100 million yuan each, said Guo.

Editor: Yan