Example Of Pekalongan Service Cooperative With Assets Of IDR 12 Trillion, Kemenkop UKM Continues To Encourage Cooperative Mergers

Deputy for Cooperatives at the Ministry of Cooperatives and SMEs Ahmad Zabadi. (Photo: Doc. Antara/KemenkopUKM)

JAKARTA - The Indonesian government encourages cooperatives to carry out amalgamation or mergers as a strategy in order to increase the competitiveness of cooperatives so that they remain present and exist in future business development. Deputy for Cooperatives at the Ministry of Cooperatives and SMEs Ahmad Zabadi said cooperative mergers are not new because the action has been carried out. by cooperatives in Indonesia since decades ago. "The presence of the Village Unit Cooperative (KUD) in the past before the reform, for example, was a process of unifying several business entities that were in one village and sub-district environment which later gave birth to KUD," said Ahmad in a seminar entitled Digital Cooperative Transformation quoted by Antara, Monday, August 15. The Ministry of Cooperatives and SMEs noted that several large cooperatives in Indonesia, such as Kospin Jasa Pekalongan were the result of the merger of four cooperatives which made the cooperative's assets reach approximately Rp. 12 trillion with better business management. more than Rp. 20 trillion. In addition, there is the Cellular Telecommunications Cooperative (Kisel) which is the result of the merger of 11 cooperatives. Kisel is one of the large cooperatives in Indonesia with assets of approximately Rp. 7 trillion and has been listed in position 94 of the world's 300 large cooperatives in 2018-2019.

Ahmad explained that many non-cooperative companies also carry out the merger process, such as several state-owned enterprises. Merger is a strategy to maintain and develop business and entity existence, so that they can compete in today's competitive era. The merger will be more effective in terms of carrying capacity and the development of business and institutional management that they do already use information technology. "Thus, digital transformation becomes a necessity for our cooperative in the future," concluded Ahmad.