'I Will Answer Buya Anwar Abbas', Said President Jokowi And Then Removed The Prepared Written Text
JAKARTA - Deputy Chairperson of the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI), Buya Anwar Abbas, reminded the government to pay attention to micro and ultra-micro businesses. Anwar Abbas said, these two business classes do not yet have access to adequate financing to reach banks.
He observed that so far the government has succeeded in prospering only large, medium, and small businesses. Meanwhile, business groups that enter the micro and ultra-micro class have not been touched by banking funding.
"So the socio-economic gap of the Indonesian people is getting steeper and increasing every year. This is very dangerous because it has the potential to disrupt the stability of the nation's unity,” said Buya Anwar when giving a speech at the Opening of the Second People's Economic Congress, Friday, December 10 at the Sultan Hotel. President Jokowi was also present at this event.
He said the micro and ultra micro-business groups reached 68 percent. Business actors in this class reach 63 million people. If this group is considered, he said, the purchasing power of the people in the aggregate will also increase significantly.
"It is necessary to take affirmative steps from the government in the form of stronger policies to change this situation. So that lower-class people can be helped, especially those in the micro and ultra-micro business groups. The government needs to assist, support, facilitate capital, production processes, marketing, to management," explained Buya Anwar in front of the president.
A moment later, it was Jokowi's turn to speak. Initially, Jokowi opened with greetings. And Jokowi went straight to the point while showing some pieces of paper that his staff had already prepared.
"Earlier I prepared many greeting materials like this," he said, holding the paper in his left hand.
"But after I heard earlier, Dr. Buya Anwar Abbas said that, I'm not holding this too. I will answer what Dr. Buya Anwar Abbas has said," Jokowi continued.
"It would be better in my opinion, in this excellent forum," continued Jokowi with a smile.
For starters, the discussion is about land and land tenure. Jokowi said that he was not the one who divided the land affairs.
"Yes, I have to answer. I have to answer. And, we are currently in the process of distributing agrarian reform with the target we have reached 4.3 million hectares of the 12 million target that we want to share," he said.
"And now, we already have a land bank. We will see the HGU (Certificate of Utilization Permit), HGB (Right of Building Utilization), which are abandoned, all of them. Maybe God willing, I will start this month or maybe next month, I will start to revoke one by one, they are abandoned because there are so many. The concessions are given, it's been more than 20 years, more than 30 years, but we can't do anything about it, so we can't give it to others," he said.
Jokowi's complete statement has been written in the editorial in the article "Jokowi's Explanation at Length for Responses to Anwar Abbas's Criticism at the MUI Congress". For more details, click on the link.