Minister Teten Expects Cooperatives To Be A Financing Solution For Productive Sector Micro Enterprises

JAKARTA - Minister of Cooperatives and SMEs Teten Masduki emphasized that cooperatives must be able to become a financing solution for micro-enterprises, which 99 percent dominate the economy in Indonesia.

"Currently, we are also encouraging savings and loan cooperatives (KSP) to actively finance the productive sector and not only to the trade sector", he said as quoted from the Ministry of Cooperatives and Small and Medium Enterprises (Kemenkop UKM) website on Wednesday, June 2.

According to Teten, the KSP is considered to have a strategic role in advancing productive economic enterprises, such as agriculture, plantations, and fisheries. For this reason, he hopes that banks do not need to enter the sector because it is considered too risky.

"Cooperatives are expected to strengthen the people's economy in the productive food sector, by providing easy and cheap access to financing", he said.

Furthermore, Teten also encourages the digitization of cooperatives. According to him, Indonesia's digital economy is predicted to be the largest in Southeast Asia.

"The future potential in 2025 is estimated at IDR 1.748 trillion and this is strategic enough to encourage national economic recovery", he said.

Teten also gave directions for large cooperatives to help improve the competitiveness of MSME products. Therefore, it is important for cooperatives to build a factory sharing system so that MHMs that do not have many modern production tools can join large cooperatives.

"Strengthening cooperatives as an original Indonesian economic system is important to be able to develop bigger", he concluded.