VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

Jakarta (VOI News) -  Chairman of the National Economic Recovery and Transformation Task Force Budi Gunadi Sadikin in Jakarta on Friday, August 28, noted that the government plans to continue assistance for small and medium micro-entrepreneurs to overcome the COVID-19 pandemic.

Budi admitted that the government has distributed 2.4 trillion rupiahs as assistance for micro-entrepreneurs for one week. Totally, the government has budgeted 22 trillion rupiahs for 9 million micro-entrepreneurs in Indonesia to drive Indonesia's economy in the third quarter.

“They are classified as micro-entrepreneurs and being registered with the Ministry of Cooperatives and Small Medium Enterprises (KemenKOPUKM) and then entering the banking system, banks can see the business of the micro-entrepreneurs,” said Budi Gunadi Sadikin.

It has not been touched and has not been seen by Indonesian banks. Thus, bankers are constantly looking for customers, naturally. They will see that currently there are about 15 million potential new micro-entrepreneurs that the government can provide bank credit to.

The government with the Coordinating Ministry for the Small and Medium Enterprises realizes that by doing this program as the first step, giving a grant of 2.4 million to a potential 15 million micro-entrepreneurs.

The government opens the opportunity to continue to the second phase of the program where the government can provide micro-business soft loans. 

So, the government has planned to discuss it with the Ministry of Cooperatives and Small Enterprises and have discussed it with the Coordinating Ministry for the Economy, and the government will carry out to follow-up program to be able to provide micro-business soft credit programs to MSME entrepreneurs which the government previously gave a grant of 2.4 million earlier.

In the last few weeks, Budi Gunadi Sadikin stated that the disbursement of aid funds by the government is big enough. He said, in the social protection sector, the government has disbursed additional assistance of 7 trillion rupiahs, while in the MSME sector, additional assistance has reached 11.2 trillion rupiahs.

Budi hopes that this assistance will not only be short-term but also long-term in order to build fundamental economic changes. (VOI/Andy/trans:AF)