Coordinating Minister Airlangga Descends Mountains, Embraces Campus Residents To Attract Students' Interests To Become Entrepreneurs

JAKARTA - Coordinating Minister for the Economy Airlangga Hartarto carried out a work agenda by holding virtual discussions with campus residents in Indonesia to attract students to become entrepreneurs or new entrepreneurs.

According to Airlangga, universities need to prepare an incubator center and business development in the campus environment to educate entrepreneurs from an early age.

“This is a practice facility in universities that will become the forerunner to the development of various new start-ups that are able to offer creative and innovative ideas. So it will not only create job opportunities but also have quality products that can compete globally," he said in an official statement, Tuesday, February 22.

Airlangga explained that the government is committed to grow micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) through financing for people's business loans or KUR. In his notes, this year the government targets the distribution of KUR of IDR 373.17 trillion.

Furthermore, Airlangga also said that KUR also targets entrepreneurs among students. The goal is that students are not only able to make innovations, but also create jobs to help accelerate the national economic recovery.

Meanwhile, students who have businesses can take advantage of financing through KUR according to their needs. Among other things, Super Micro KUR for businesses that have a maximum financing need of IDR 10 million, Micro KUR for financing between IDR 10 million to IDR 100 million.

"Besides that, there is still a Small KUR targeting businesses with a capital requirement of IDR 100 million to IDR 500 million," said Airlangga.

Airlangga added that the state KUR program provides an interest rate subsidy of 3 percent until the end of December 2022. This means that creditors will only be charged an interest of 3 percent until the end of the year. This is done because the government gives priority to MSMEs to be able to help the national economic recovery.

“This further emphasizes that the MSME sector has an important role in the Indonesian economy because it contributes 61 percent of GDP. Not only that, MSMEs are also able to absorb 97 percent of the workforce in Indonesia," concluded Coordinating Minister Airlangga.