Former Trade Minister Gita Wirjawan Says Interest For MSMEs In Indonesia Is Still High 8-11 Percent: Far From Malaysia, Which Is Only 2 Percent

Former Minister of Trade, Gita Wirjawan. (Photo: Instagram @gwirjawan)

JAKARTA - Former Trade Minister Gita Wirjawan advised Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) to be more sensitive and proactive in taking advantage of opportunities.

"Many people are sensitive, but they are not used. If we use it more often, then we are more selective in using it," he said, quoted from Antara, Tuesday, October 12.

He said that MSMEs must be empowered considering the total percentage of the workforce reaches 98 to 99 percent and will affect social, economic, political, and cultural stability.

In addition, the effect obtained by the MSME sector when empowered is an increase in profit (income) by prioritizing services over goods.

"Services are worth more than goods. It doesn't mean we no longer need to sell (goods), but we have to focus on services that are more 'knowledge economy'," said Gita.

With an increase in profits, he said, it will further increase tax payments so that the government can more easily provide whatever the community needs. Such as providing social safety nets, repairing bridges, gutters and railroads.

An increase in tax payments also creates the potential for the government to lower taxes. This can have a sustainable positive effect, starting from a decrease in the level of economic inequality, guaranteed economic stability, and more and more business actors being able to explore in business development.

In addition, Gita reminded that Indonesia can make improvements in terms of interest rates because it is still applying a high percentage of 8-11 percent. This is far from Malaysia which applies an interest rate of 2 percent or Singapore, which ranges from 1 to 1.5 percent.

Then, Indonesia is also still lagging behind in terms of infrastructure that is not yet established.

"Productivity (economic) in Singapore is much higher than productivity here. If you want to refer to productivity or the productivity matrix, we still have a lot of homework, but that doesn't mean we can't catch up," he said.

He considered this a shared responsibility to make improvements to infrastructure and interest rates, among others. With this, it is hoped that the MSME sector will prosper in the next 10 years.