Coordinating Minister For The Economy Airlangga: Assisted Farmers And Fishermen's Welfare Through The Job Creation Law

Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs, Airlangga Hartarto. (Photo: Coordinating Ministry for Economic Affairs)

JAKARTA - The COVID-19 pandemic that has occurred since the beginning of the year, has hit almost all sectors. Including agriculture and fisheries. The government has also rolled out seven programs to encourage the welfare of farmers and fishermen through the Omnibus Law on Cipta Kerja.

The seven programs in question are first, the development of a food estate to encourage corporations. Coordinating Minister for the Economy Airlangga Hartarto said the government had prepared land in Central Kalimantan and Humbang Hasundutan.

Then, the second program is the development of the rice business cluster. Third, export-oriented horticulture development. Fourth, an inclusive closed-loop horticultural commodity partnership model.

"This is a form of agricultural corporatization with a partnership pattern, especially upstream and downstream integration," he said at the 5 Jakarta Food Security Summit, Wednesday, November 18.

Fifth, the development of a thousand cow villages. Sixth, the development of the seaweed industry. Seventh, farmer and fisherman corporation development.

The Job Creation Law, said Airlangga, also facilitates the formation of farmer and fisherman cooperatives. Through this regulation, farmer and fisherman cooperatives can be formed with only nine people.

Not only that, the Job Creation Law also changed several laws in the agricultural sector by prioritizing the principle of simplification and convenience. These changes, among others, facilitate business licensing for certain scale agricultural cultivation with the prohibition of doing business on ulayat lands of the central government.

The former Minister of Industry said, through the Job Creation Law, there was also simplification in the consideration of determining land area boundaries for plantation businesses, simplifying administration for applications for protection of plant varieties, and arranging horticultural partnership patterns for ease of doing business.

Furthermore, the determination of public grazing areas that can be carried out by the central government, simplification of seed / seed / plant / animal export-import permits for business convenience, and easy access to agricultural information systems for the public and business actors

Airlangga emphasized that there were also several simplifications of the law on the maritime and fisheries sector in the Job Creation Law, namely, cutting fishing vessel permits from 16 types to three types to simplifying the capture fisheries licensing process from 14 days to 30 minutes.

For your information, the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) said that the number of people working as of August 2020 was 128.45 million people. From this figure, most work in the agricultural sector with 38.23 million workers or around 29.76 percent.