Minister Of MSMEs Says IDR 486.10 Billion Debt For MSME Actors Has Been Abolished As Of April 11, 2025

JAKARTA - Minister of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) Maman Abdurrahman revealed that the government through the Himbara Bank ranks had removed debts from 19,375 MSME actors with a value of Rp486.10 billion until April 11, 2025.

"With the conditions for restructuring, there are only 67,668 debtors with a total receivable value of Rp. 2.7 trillion that can be deleted from the potential of 1,097,155 debtors with a total receivable value of Rp. 14.8 trillion," said Maman as quoted from his written statement, Thursday, May 1.

Even so, Maman said, the implementation of this debt collection program faces regulatory challenges. One of them must be preceded by restructuring and maximum collection efforts, which are regulated in the Law on the Development and Strengthening of the Financial Sector (P2SK).

According to Maman, restructuring only works if the debt rate is large. However, for a small debt figure, the cost of restructuring can be much greater.

"Because there is an obligation to be restructured, this becomes complicated in deleting MSME bills," he said.

The realization of removing debt collections that have only targeted around 19,000 debtors is also due to several obstacles.

The first obstacle in question is that Himbara banks must obtain budget approval to remove collection at their General Meeting of Shareholders (GMS).

At the same time, although Himbara banks have budgeted funds for the program to abolish debt collection of MSME debtors, the signing of the administration by the new board of directors of Himbara Bank still has to wait for authorization from the Financial Services Authority (OJK).

"Because they are now new directors who have to go through a selection mechanism at the OJK. So, to pursue the 67,000 debtors, we are now just waiting for the OJK's approval," said Maman.

Behind the achievement of debt abolition of more than 19,000 MSME debtors, the large target of deleting debt collection to 1 million MSME debtors has the potential to fail to be achieved on time or even difficult to achieve.

This is due to Government Regulation (PP) Number 47 of 2024 concerning the Elimination of bad debts to MSMEs which are in effect from November 5, 2024, which will end on May 5, 2025.