Becoming One Of The SOEs With The Largest Profit Growth, PLN Boss: The Fruit Of Transformation And Efficiency Efforts

JAKARTA - State-Owned Enterprises (BUMN) have an important contribution to economic recovery, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. This BUMN contribution is the result of the efficiency and transformation carried out by the Ministry of BUMN and the BUMN itself in adapting to global challenges.

Special Staff to the Minister of SOEs, Arya Sinulingga, explained that the contribution of SOEs, for example, was able to reduce poverty by reducing the number of lower class people. "The middle class has reached 232 million. This means that the lower class is getting smaller," said Arya in the Webinar "SOEs Locomotive of National Economic Recovery" on Wednesday, August 17.

Arya also explained that SOEs in the 2021 financial year were able to increase revenues from Rp1,130 trillion to Rp1,982 trillion. This increase in revenue will increase total profit growth which is able to be pocketed by SOEs so that they can contribute more to the country.

"On the other hand, our profits have increased by 40 percent. So this is an example of our success in carrying out efficiency and transformation. The net profit of the 10 largest companies in Indonesia, of which seven are state-owned enterprises," said Arya.

Arya also explained that from the profit growth of 10 large companies in Indonesia, seven companies came from BUMN and one of the largest was PLN. "This shows evidence that SOEs are on the right track. Not to mention in terms of taxes, of the 10 biggest issuers, there are three SOEs," added Arya.

Meanwhile, the President Director of PLN, Darmawan Prasodjo, said that under the direction of the Minister of SOEs Erick Thohir and his staff, SOEs must become the driving force of economic growth and make extra efforts in economic recovery. Currently, PLN has made innovations in various business processes in an effort to increase electricity demand while supporting the community's economy.

Darmawan explained PLN's vision in this major transformation, which is not only to provide electricity for the community but also to protect the environment for future generations. For this reason, PLN is committed to the success of carbon neutral in 2060 which was proclaimed by the government by encouraging the use of clean energy in the community.

“We facilitate people to switch from expensive, imported and environmentally unfriendly fuel-based vehicles to electric vehicles. With this we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than 50 percent," said Darmawan.

PLN's transformation and efficiency efforts have succeeded in making PLN's finances healthy. PLN's transformation efforts were able to increase demand in 2021 yesterday by 5.78 percent. In addition, in the first half of this year PLN was able to pocket a net profit of IDR 17.4 trillion. This achievement shot up 162.4 percent from the same period last year, Rp. 6.6 trillion.

Meanwhile, as a form of encouraging the economy, PLN has also developed an electrifying agriculture program. Farmers who used to use fuel switched to electricity, reducing their operational costs by up to 70 percent.

"This provides extraordinary changes in the agricultural sector. This strategy is expected to accelerate the energy transition while supporting economic growth," said Darmawan.

Darmawan is committed to continuing to make PLN a healthy BUMN and capable of supporting economic growth. He added that PLN continues to transform to answer customer needs so that when customers have easy access to electricity and get added value from the use of electricity, they can encourage better economic growth.