Bandung, The Indonesia Post – The Minister of Cooperatives and SMEs (MenkopUKM) Teten Masduki encouraged all citizens to buy cooperative products and Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) as an effort to face the potential for stagflation in the second semester of 2022 and move the Indonesian economy.
“Of course we will continue to encourage public consumption by buying SME products, to drive our economy,” said Minister Teten Masduki when giving a speech at the commemoration of the 2022 MSME National Day in Bandung, West Java, Friday.
Teten Masduki said that one of Indonesia’s economic strengths is relying on business actors such as cooperatives and SMEs so that various efforts need to be made to keep their business wheels running.
For this reason, his party will build a digital platform to provide easy services for cooperatives and SMEs. “Currently we have built an e-catalog, online shop, ODS, OSS, smesta, lamikro, S-KOPI (financial hub and credit scoring), and ISSMEI (MSME integrated service),” said Teten Masduki.
He said the government must maintain the development of MSMEs through the digitalization process in the face of the world economic crisis, where economic growth is currently being corrected from 3.6 percent to 3.2 percent. It is even predicted that world economic growth in 2023 will be corrected to 2.9 percent.
“So we need to continue to maintain the domestic economy as a source of growth and especially MSMEs. However, we also need to create opportunities for overseas market expansion,” said Teten Masduki.
Currently, he continued, there are already 19 million MSMEs that have entered the digital ecosystem and his party targets 30 million MSMEs to enter the ecosystem by 2024.
Meanwhile, West Java Governor M Ridwan Kamil admitted that he had communicated with other regions to establish cooperation in utilizing MSME products.
One of the existing collaborations, he said, was between the West Java Provincial Government and the South Sulawesi Provincial Government.
According to him, economic cooperation using MSME products with various provinces is needed in the midst of the world economic crisis that hit so that Indonesia continues to depend on foreign products.
“So the key is not to depend on foreign products. If possible, we can maximize trade between ourselves, God willing, the economy will be safe,” he said. (mhn/bbs)
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