Encouraging Mini Sarinah's Presence At Airports, Minister Of SOEs: To Facilitate MSMEs Upgrading

SOE Minister Erick Thohir while attending the inauguration of the Sarinah Building. (Photo: Doc. BUMN)

JAKARTA - Minister of State-Owned Enterprises (BUMN) Erick Thohir said Sarinah's transformation is a BUMN commitment in following up on President Joko Widodo's (Jokowi) directives. Since the completion of a major renovation and opening to the public in March 2022, the enthusiasm of the community to come to Sarinah has been extraordinary.

"Today is a milestone and a milestone in the history of renewal for Sarinah. Since the soft launch last March, the enthusiasm of the community has been extraordinary. We receive reports that Sarinah is visited by an average of 40 thousand people every day and even on weekends it could be more," he said during the inauguration of Sarinah's transformation in Sarinah, Jakarta, Thursday, July 14.

Erick said that the public's enthusiasm for Sarinah's new face could not be separated from Sarinah's strategy of providing open spaces, such as the Sarinah Pavilion, which presented performances of music or performing arts. Then, the art district provides one floor for performances and works of art created by a talented community and excellent curators of Indonesia.

"Alhamdulillah, Sarinah is now trendy and popular with young people and future generations and is starting to get foreign tourist visits," said Erick.

Erick assessed that the essence of Sarinah's transformation is slowly starting to appear, namely from just a department store to a Community Mall that fosters community creations and harvests the maximum results from their innovations. Sarinah is now a shopping, creative, social, cultural, virtual, and style space.

Furthermore, Erick said there were as many as 500 MSMEs that had joined Sarinah. These include the business of batik shoes with the Sebatik brand, herbal drinks with the Suwe Ora Jamu brand, the Nusantara fashion wastra with the Nyonya Milik brand, and the Cawang Art brand crafts.

"We are not complacent and continue to push Sarinah-Sarinah mini at airports as windows for our local products," he said.

Erick said that the presence of Sarinah mini at the airport is a form of BUMN's commitment to facilitate more MSME actors in their efforts to advance to class. With strict curation, Erick wants to prove that local products have quality that can compete in the domestic and international markets.

"I believe that our MSMEs will be able to go global in the future but they must dominate the local market first, then go abroad. Therefore, the president is pleased to make Sarinah a destination for state guests to visit here. God willing, on July 17, IMF managing director will hold an event here," he said.

The Ministry of SOEs, continued Erick, has succeeded in integrating and synergizing the tourism and support service clusters, in which PT Aviasi Wisata Indonesia (Persero) is the head of the SOE cluster with five members consisting of PT Angkasa Pura I, PT Angkasa Pura II, PT Hotel Indonesia Natour, PT Taman Wisata Candi Borobudur, Prambanan and Ratu Boko, and PT Sarinah.

"The purpose of this merger is to make a leap of structuring momentum, transformation momentum, build a stronger and more resilient ecosystem so that Indonesian tourism management can be carried out more efficiently and integrated from upstream to downstream," he said.

As a member of the tourism cluster and a supporter, said Erick, Sarinah is one of the tourist destinations which is a cultural heritage and people's economic heritage. The country's leaders not only liberated Indonesia, but also raised the spirit of a relatively newly independent nation at that time to be taken into account and respected by the world.

"Sarinah is a manifesto or beacon of the Indonesian internationalism and modernism movement which is embodied in the first modern retail shopping center to protect the people's economy, who at that time still traded traditionally as retailers or hawkers," he said.