Teten Masduki Calls The Cooperative Bill Will Be A Long-Term Solution

Minister of Cooperatives and SMEs Teten Masduki during a meeting with his staff in Jakarta, Tuesday, September 20. (Photo: Doc. ANTARA)

JAKARTA - Minister of Cooperatives and SMEs (MenkopUKM) Teten Masduki stated that the Draft Law (RUU) on Cooperatives will be a system solution and in the long term build Indonesian cooperatives to become stronger, healthier, independent, and more resilient.

He said strengthening the operating ecosystem would be carried out with several efforts.

"First, with the initiative to establish an Independent Supervisory Agency to strengthen supervision, especially for the savings and loan sector of cooperatives," said Teten Masduki in an official statement, Jakarta, Wednesday.

Medium and large scale cooperatives with about hundreds of thousands of members, he continued, need to be strengthened so that they are more prudent and trusted.

Second, he continued, the initiative to establish a Cooperatives Savings Guarantee Institution is to build a sense of security and comfort for cooperative members in storing their funds.

Furthermore, the regulation on bankruptcy so that a cooperative can only be determined by an authorized official. With that, the handling of cooperative problems follows the right stages and is not disturbed by internal and external bankruptcy claims.

For Teten, bankruptcy is really determined objectively through a series of certain mechanisms or processes and determinations.

Strengthening other operating ecosystems is the arrangement of criminal sanctions as an effort to protect legal entities, members, and the wider community, in order to avoid potential abuse and misappropriation of cooperative practices.

Teten believes that the various loopholes that have been used by irresponsible people have reduced.

In addition to these four efforts, the upcoming new law will also strengthen the role of supervisors. So far, in the field, many supervisors do not play a role, it is more visible as a complement to the organizational structure," he said.

In the bill, supervisors are given the responsibility for losses if they are negligent in supervising cooperatives. Based on these provisions, the supervisor is expected to be more vigilant and actually play the functions he carries.

With some of these efforts, he said, cases of eight problematic cooperatives can be anticipated and avoided. If a problematic cooperative case occurs again, it can be handled as well as possible in the future.

Now, said Teten, the government does not have sufficient instruments to handle problematic cooperatives so that they are less than optimal due to limited regulations in regulations.

"However, the cases of eight problematic cooperatives with estimated losses reaching Rp26 trillion are a warning that existing regulations have loopholes and holes that can be utilized by irresponsible parties," said Teten.

As is known, the Ministry of Cooperatives together with all relevant stakeholders continue to draft the Cooperative Bill to replace Law Number 25 of 1992 with various strategic issues mapped including capital provisions, governance patterns, business field expansion, and strengthening the operating ecosystem.