**Treasure rescued from a 1,000-year old Chinese shipwreck off Indonesia is set to go under the hammer in Jakarta.**Organisers hope the sale will raise $80m (£52.7m), one of the largest sums ever raised at auction in the country.
But there are fears of a lack of interest, as no potential buyer has yet paid the $16m deposit required to bid.
The treasure, found on a 10th Century Chinese ship off the coast of West Java in 2004, is believed to be one of the largest troves ever found in Asia.
In total some 271,000 items are being offered at the sale in the capital, Jakarta.
“Ceramics account for about 90% of the findings,” Aris Kabul, secretary of the auction committee told Reuters.
Others items include delicate jewel-studded gold jewellery, crystal ware and swords with Arabic inscriptions.
Mr Sudirman, Indonesia’s Director General of Maritime, Coastal areas, and Small Islands, said the amount raised would be split equally between the government and the treasure hunters who retrieved the goods from the sunken ship.
“The cost of the removal of the goods from the ancient shipwreck was $10m,” he said.
“Indonesia doesn’t have the resources to be able to remove these sorts of underwater treasures by ourselves.”
Organisers say there have been about 20 expressions of interest from across Asia, but that no-one has put forward the deposit required by the government.
The BBC’s Karishma Vaswani in Jakarta says $16m is a hefty charge to ask, but the auction organisers only want serious buyers to attend the sale.
Maritime Affairs Ministry official Ansori Zawawi told the AFP news agency the sale would still go ahead.
“Although no buyers have registered, the auction must be opened as this is part of the procedure,” he said.
The government says it will hold a second auction if this one proves unsuccessful.This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
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