TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) said that state-owned enterprises (SOE) would show their competitiveness once a competitor enters the picture. The president stated that with the absence of any competitor, SOE and its employees are usually lacking performance and unable to be creative.
“The slow culture is born from the absence of any competitor and living a life within their comfort zone. We often only react when a competitor arrives,” he said in the Indonesian Rector Forum (FRI) at Hasanuddin University in Makassar on Thursday, February 15.
The president gave an example of state-owned bank BRI. When Jokowi was in junior high, BRI's employees would finish work and start leaving the office at 1 p.m. Added by the fact that the design structure was too simple and unappealing. He said that BRI only changed after the arrival of numerous private-owned banks.
“But Alhamdulillah (thank God), state-owned banks are competitive now, with a large profit margin. BRI is not privately-owned or foreign. This means that state banks can compete with foreign banks and can even generate a Rp29 trillion profit,” said Jokowi. It was not just BRI, but also Bank Mandiri and BNI.
President Jokowi also mentioned the improvements of state airline Garuda Indonesia and state-owned oil and natural gas corporation Pertamina.
ANTARA
