Erick Thohir Trims 35 BUMN, There Are More In The Future

JAKARTA - State-Owned Enterprises (BUMN) Minister Erick Thohir admitted that he has cut 35 state-owned companies. Where originally the number was 142 companies, to 107 SOEs.

Erick said, this step was part of the company's efficiency within the BUMN. Moreover, President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) has issued presidential decree (Kepres) number 10 of 2020 concerning the formation of a team to accelerate the restructuring of BUMN.

"Thank God, the President has issued a Presidential Decree regarding the formation of a BUMN restructuring acceleration team, but it is limited to merging or liquidating it, but that does not mean selling its assets," said Erick, during a working meeting with Commission VI, Tuesday, June 9.

It is not enough to stop there, Erick intends to further reduce the state-owned companies which currently number 107 companies. This step is also part of the follow-up action of Keppres 10/2020.

"Of course we will continue to reduce this if we can get to numbers 70 to 80 in the future. This is of course stage one already, the next we try to do," he said.

The restructuring of the BUMN business, said Erick, aims to maintain health and improve the performance and internal state of the BUMN. Moreover, the presence of COVID-19 is the right thing to make improvements.

Erick said that 90 percent of the business world, including BUMN, was corrected and only 10 percent were able to be sustainable, namely the health, food, technology and pharmaceutical industries.

"Of course, in this restructuring, we will make a joint decision with the Minister of Finance (Sri Mulyani) and also discuss it together with related ministers," he explained.

Existing BUMN clusters were also restructured. Initially there were 27 clusters, which were then trimmed down to 12 remaining clusters of BUMN.

Meanwhile, the 12 clusters, namely the energy and gas cluster, the mineral and coal cluster, the plantation and forestry cluster, the fertilizer and food cluster, the pharmaceutical cluster, the defense industry cluster, the insurance cluster, the media cluster, the infrastructure cluster, the tourism cluster and the facilities and infrastructure cluster.

"Clusters are also formed based on what is known as the value chain, supply chain or how to synergize the existing core business," he said.