REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, SEMARANG -- The Semarang branch of the Indonesian Stock Exchange (BEI) said it recorded 3,500 new investors in the first half of the year.

"The performance is expected to be better than last year. In the whole of last year, there were only 4,100 new investors," head of the Semarang branch of BEI Stephanus Cahyanto Kristiadi said here on Tuesday.

Last year the performance fell short of the target of bringing the total number of investors to 20,000 investors, Stephanus said.

The target is also set at 20,000 for the total number this year.

With the additional number of 3,500 , the number of investors totaled around 11,000 by the end of the first half of the year, he said.

Transactions per month last year averaged Rp700 billion in value and in the first half of the year the monthly transactions rose to Rp1 trillion on the average, he said.

One driver of the increase was the sentiment of the tax amnesty policy, he said.

"In addition, investors began to have greater optimism with the country's economic condition," he added.