Minister Teten Says Printing Young Entrepreneurs Must Involve Universities

Illustration (Photo: Doc. Antara)

JAKARTA - Minister of Cooperatives and SMEs Teten Masduki targets the percentage of young entrepreneurs to increase from 3.18 percent to 3.95 percent in 2024.

In order to make this happen, Teten admits that there is a need for a change in mindset, especially in creating young entrepreneurs.

"This requires a new approach. Not with a bureaucratic approach. To prepare these new entrepreneurs, we have to work together with campus incubators and private incubators," Teten said as quoted by Antara, Tuesday, August 9.

The Incubator is a platform that accommodates and supports startups and new entrepreneurs to develop business models, as well as connect them to investors.

Teten said that currently large campuses already have their own business incubators, so the ministry under their command is trying to support other universities to participate in forming business incubators.

He said, to realize the target, there must be approximately one million young entrepreneurs within two years.

“The minimum (figure) for developed countries (having entrepreneurs) is four percent. The average developed country now is between 10 and 12 percent. We are still lagging behind Singapore, which is currently 8.6 percent, while Thailand and Malaysia are already above 4.5 percent,” said Teten.

Therefore, he hopes that the signing of a memorandum of understanding of cooperation (MoU) between the Ministry of Cooperatives and SMEs with universities will serve as a foothold for campuses to direct students to become entrepreneurs instead of becoming employees of private companies or civil servants.

“We really have to change the mindset of universities, we can no longer prepare graduates to become employees. We change how students are not job seekers, but job creators," he said.

Teten admitted that he was conveying Bali as an area of concern for the Ministry of Cooperatives and SMEs to produce one million young entrepreneurs by 2024.

"We chose Bali as one of our priorities, because Bali has an entrepreneurial DNA. There are many successful entrepreneurs here, and Bali is also a window to enter the global market. At least, we can introduce MSME products from all over Indonesia through Bali," he concluded.