SME Minister Urges Regions to Use Sarinah as Means to Promote MSMEs

Sarinah Building (Photo by: PR of Ministry of Cooperatives and SMEs)

Minister of Cooperatives and Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) Teten Masduki has urged regional governments to use Sarinah, a state-owned shopping mall in Jakarta, as a means to promote the featured products of their respective regions, especially those produced by Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs).

Teten made the statement while meeting heads of Cooperatives and MSMEs offices from many provinces at Sarinah. The heads of offices came to Jakarta to attend the 2022 National Coordination Meeting of Digital Transformation and Thorough Data Collection of Cooperatives and MSMEs.

“MSME products can be exclusive because they have their own home and narration. Back then, I insisted to mall managements that 20 percent of space should be given to MSMEs. Apparently, that is not their home. They [MSME actors] cannot compete. Sarinah is a comfortable home to MSMEs,” he said as quoted from the official website of Ministry of Cooperatives and SMEs, Wednesday (03/30).

Teten added that regional governments can make Sarinah an example and follow suit to make a home for MSMEs by transforming old state-owned buildings into a comfortable souvenir store with quality curated products.

“Moving forward, MSMEs must have a strong narration to sell and have their own place. We have many old buildings in regions, so do not sell [products] on roadsides, [people] will not respect that,” he said while urging regional governments to have aggregators that can compile MSME products to display them at Sarinah.

“I recommend that regions must have aggregators, be it cooperatives or regional companies to buy the products, then the regional companies will enter Sarinah. [The products] will certainly be curated and everything by regional aggregators and Sarinah. It will be complicated if it is done one by one, so aggregators play a vital role in small or micro production system. It is hard to have stable supplies, both in terms of quantity or quality, so they can be substituted by something else,” he said.

Meanwhile, President Director of Sarinah Fetty Kwartati has welcomed the measures taken by the Government to push MSME products to level up.

“The new Sarinah is very closely related to Ministry of Cooperatives and SMEs. We can synergize more widely, which enables us to take care of the upstream and downstream well and Sarinah can provide access to the market and capacity building, so MSMEs can level up,” she said, adding that Sarinah has transformed and made many improvements in all aspects, starting from business concept, which has now become community mall; branding, which brands Sarinah as a must-visit destination; and social and cultural space.

For the record, Sarinah also provides various new spaces, such as culinary center, trading house, art district, and so on. Sarinah will also cooperate with many regional offices to curate MSME products to display.

“We discussed cooperation with heads of offices of different regions who made the visit. Each region can be an aggregator and curate their products, and later Sarinah will select them again to display to the public,” Fetty remarked. (PR of Ministry of Cooperatives and SMEs/UN) (DH/HD/MMB)

The official website of Ministry of Cooperatives and SMEs can be accessed through this link.