Vice President Maruf Amin's Hope For MSMEs: Not Stunting Because Modern Retail Assists

Vice President Ma'ruf Amin at Thamrin City Jakarta. (Photo: ANTARA)

JAKARTA - Vice President Ma'ruf Amin hopes that Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises can grow big because they have partnered with Indonesian retail industry players.

"I hope MSMEs will no longer suffer from massive stunting because they are assisted by modern retailers," said Vice President Ma'ruf Amin as quoted from Antara, Tuesday, May 24.

This was said by Maruf at the launch of The State of The Global Islamic Economy Report (SGIE Report) 2022, the inauguration of the Indonesian Halal Center, the Modern Retail Movement for Halal Products and the launch of the Halal Scanner application HALIV.

"Today we are witnessing a good initiation from modern retail industry players in supporting the marketing of MSME halal products," he said.

This step, according to him, will make it easier for people to get products that are guaranteed to be halal.

"I hope that modern retail shelves will be increasingly filled with halal products that don't only come from big brands, but also halal products from MSMEs throughout Indonesia," added the Vice President.

The most important thing, said Ma'ruf, is the marketing of halal products through modern retailers such as Hypermart, Alfamart, Indomart to Superindo in order to make it easier for the public to get halal-certified products.

"Now this is in the context of expanding marketing so that later people will no longer be difficult to find it but it is already in supermarkets. This is also in order to make Indonesia a world halal center both for domestic marketing purposes and for export, both to Middle Eastern countries, OIC and non-OIC countries," explained the Vice President.

According to him, there are a number of things that must be done by stakeholders in order to encourage the marketing of halal products according to the principle of mutual help (ta'awun) in Islam.

"First, the awareness to support each other between stakeholders will create solutions for various problems such as research and development funding, mastery of innovation and technology, improving the quality and capacity of human resources, to market access," added Ma'ruf.

Without the support of research and innovation, he continued, Indonesia will lose a great opportunity to export halal products, both to countries that are members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and non-OIC.

"In the future, we must be able to increase the productivity of superior commodities with added value and competitiveness to meet the export market as well as import substitution," he said.

The second is mutual support between large and small industries.

"During working visits to regions, I often review local MSMEs. Quite a number of MSMEs are starting to be able to innovate and penetrate the export market. I hope that large industries can support MSMEs, including through facilitation of business incubation, creative funding, capacity building and literacy, as well as integration global halal hub," concluded Ma'ruf Amin.