Govt Providing Rp100 Trillion for Small Businesses

Denpasar (Antara Bali) - The government has set a target to provide micro, small and medium-sized businesses (UMKM) with Rp100 trillion in small-holder's credits in the coming five years, a deputy minister said.

"The government has set itself a target of providing Rp20 trillion for UMKM every year in an effort to overcome capital problem and generate the development of micro, small and medium businesses in the country," Deputy Minister for Cooperatives and UMKM Development Khairul said here on Thursday.

He said that the low-interest credits were handled and channeled by a number of executing banks, among others, Bank BNI, Bank BTN, Bank Mandiri and 13 regional development banks (BPD).

The deputy minister said that it was easy for UMKMs to obtain the working capital as long as they were economically reasonable and they have so far not yet accustomed to using banking credits.

Khairul said that each UMKM could be given a maximal credit of Rp500 million.

They said that the government had up to now extended Rp19.2 trillion to 2.6 million UMKM or about Rp7.21 million for each business unit.

He said it was expected that small businesses would be able to increase their roles in boosting exports and raise economic growth with the presence of the government's UMKM program.

So far, UMKM was able to contribute 20.2 percent to non oil/non gas export income with an annual growth of about 15 to 17 percent.

"We hope that the UMKM roles would be increased in the future in line with easiness of obtaining working capital," he said.(*)