Singapore Exhibition Services, which organises BroadcastAsia and CommunicAsia, has decided to cancel the events over the SARS scare.

The events, scheduled to take place from June 17-20 in Singapore, were expected to draw a large number of IT and broadcast companies from India and abroad.

"Together with our exhibitors and stakeholders, we have decided not to go ahead with the shows.  This is a very difficult decision borne out of necessity due to the Sars outbreak and the lack of options for a suitable time frame in which to re-schedule the events," Stephen Tan, chief executive of SES, said.

Last year's BroadcastAsia show attracted more than 200 visitors from India, including Star TV, Zee TV, Raj TV, Sahara TV and state-owned broadcaster Doordarshan besides 10,000 visitors.

The Confederation of Indian Industry had used CommunicAsia2002 to showcase the Indian infotech industry for regional markets.  CII included 15 Indian companies from the IT and telecom industry for its pavilion. The show attracted a total of more than 37,000 visitors. 

"Indian product companies used to take part in the CommunicAsia event as it was the region's showcase of technology. Besides, lot of technical and marketing allaince between Indian companies and the global companies used to take place there," said an industry source.

"As the SARS outbreak in Asia has not stabilised, exhibitors and visitors alike had expressed concerns about their safety at the shows. With the WHO and US CDC advisories against traveling to SARS affected areas, it became clear that foreign visitorship to the shows will be severely affected," the organisers of the event said in a statement.

Postponing the shows to the second half of the year was considered but no suitable alternative window was available as the world calendar for this period is already filled with other events such as IBC (Amsterdam), ITU World Telecom (Geneva), CTIA Wireless (Las Vegas) and Comdex (Las Vegas).

Tan pointed out that many exhibitors and buyers are already committed to exhibiting at and visiting these events. It would therefore be difficult to identify a suitable slot without moving them too close to next year's shows. The next BroadcastAsia and CommunicAsia are scheduled to take place from 15-18 June 2004.

"This is the most expensive option open to us but we see this as a long-term business decision. We have to fulfill our responsibility to our exhibitors as well as to preserve the quality and integrity of the shows," Tan said.