TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The Cooperatives and Small-Medium Enterprises Ministry (UKM Ministry) has prepared IDR 1.8 trillion of revloving fund in 2020 for cooperatives working in the real sector, such as handicraft, fashin, and high-technology real sector.

"Cooperatives can receive the fund must certainly fulfill a number of requirements. However, we will try so that the requirements are not burdensome," said UKM Ministry Secretary Rully Indrawan in a written statement on Friday, February 14, 2020.

Rully explained that cooperatives cannot be saparated from micro, small, and medium enterprises (UMKM). Moreover, in the future, UMKM are encounraged to become cooperatives member. In return, cooperatives members are enocurage to become businesses.

Currently, the 14% export performance recorded by UMKM due to low competitiveness is considered small. Therefore, the fund, according to Rully, is expected to allow cooperatives to provide assistance to UMKM to improve their competitiveness.

"We need to change the mindset that cooperatives are small scale businesses. Do not mistaken, the number of large cooperatives in Indonesia is 0.03 percent, higher compared to major businesses which are only 0.01 percent," Rully said.

Rully added that the UKM Ministry will continue to conduct a selection on healthy and sustainable cooperatives. "With the selection, cooperatives in Indonesia is currently in a good condition," Rully said.

Although the selection will reduce the number of cooperatives, Rully underlined that the most important issues is the quality of the cooperatives and the benefits received by its members. "Therefore, we will continue to push cooperatives to be beneficial for its members," Rully said.

In the last four years, the UKM Ministry recorded that around 81,868 cooperatives in Indonesia has been dissolved.

The largest dissolve occurred in 2016 where 45,649 cooperatives were dissolved. In 2017, 32,778 cooperatives were dissolved followed bby another 2,830 cooperatives in 2018. Meanwhile in 2019, as many as 449 cooperatives were dissolved. "Currently the number of cooperatives in Indonesia is around 126,000," Rully said.

Rully however, did not explain why the cooperatives were dissolved.

EKO WAHYUDI