Minister Teten: Business Spaces At Airports, Stations, Ports, And Rest Areas Must Be Filled With 30 Percent Of MSMEs

Minister of Cooperatives and SMEs Teten Masduki. (Photo: Doc. Antara)

JAKARTA - The government continues to support micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) to rise from the pressures of the COVID-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, one way to do this is to include MSME products in the government's shopping list.

Minister of Cooperatives and Small and Medium Enterprises (Kemenkop UKM), Teten Masduki said that the realization of government spending on MSME products had reached 70 percent of the target of IDR 447.28 trillion.

"Now to speed up this process, 40 percent of government procurement of goods and services, both central and local governments, must also absorb MSME products," he said at the Launching of the Digital Storefront for MSME Products with SNI, Tuesday, November 30.

Teten also said that other support was provided through the provision of public infrastructure to MSMEs. For example, ports, airports, train stations and rest areas must provide for MSMEs.

"That 30 percent of the business space there must be for MSMEs," he said.

Not only that, said Teten, the government is also making a cooperation scheme between big businesses by involving MSMEs. Currently, there are schemes with state-owned enterprises (BUMN) and private parties.

"For example, with IKEA, Uniqlo, MNC Group, and others. So that our MSE products become part of the supply chain of SOEs and private companies," he said.

Teten said, the government is also pushing to increase the competence of exporting SMEs.

"We are working with export schools Sipo, Prasetiya Mulya, Padjadjaran University, IPB. This is specifically for Padjadjaran and IPB for agro-based SMEs," he said.

According to Teten, this method is carried out to increase the number of exported MSME products. Currently, Indonesia's MSME export products are still below exports of oil and gas or other natural resource commodities.