VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

The Ministry of State-Owned Enterprises –SOEs supports the digital economy by building infrastructure and opening funding access. That was stated by Deputy Minister of the State-owned Enterprises, I Pahala Mansury during the Forum Ekonomi Merdeka virtually on Monday (28/2).

Pahala Mansury said that Indonesia has a great potential in the digital economy sector. In 2025, Indonesian digital economic value will be projected to reach US$124 billion. With this amount, the digital economy contributes more than 10 percent to Indonesian Gross Domestic Product –GDP or 0.7 percent to global digital economy by 2025. Therefore, Pahala also remarked that Indonesia must use the potential optimally to be a main player and not just being a market for other countries.

Pahala further explained that to support the digital economy development, SOEs has 3 strategies. The first one is by building digital infrastructure from data center, cloud, to the 5G fiber optic network. Pahala also said that the business in the digital infrastructure has a great potential with market capitalization up to Rp400 trillion. The second one is by building a digital platform offering products or services needed or known in the world, such as game, healthtech, and edutech.

The third strategy is by establishing the Merah-Putih Fund to finance the potential startups. This becomes an alternative for the startups in reducing foreign capital. Pahala further stated that the Merah-Putih Fund would focus on funding the local startups so that the "soonicorn" or soon-to-be unicorn will still operate in Indonesia. In addition, this will help the local unicorns to join the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX).

The Merah- Putih Fund is targeted to be launched in Q2 2022. This fund would be managed by five corporations of SOEs in venture capital, namely Mandiri Capital Indonesia, MDI Ventures, Telkomsel Mitra Inovasi, BRI Ventures, and BNI Ventures.