Tuesday 29 April 2014

INCUBATOR FOR SMALL BUSINESS DEVELOPED TO STRENGTHEN COMPETITIVENESS

The Government had made universities in the regions as strategic medium to develop capacity of micro-and-small business players through training programs in entrepreneurship in Indonesia. In this case tertiary schools must actively operate their incubator centers to promote small business capability in entrepreneurship. To quite data of the Central Board of Statristics [BPS] the number of national entrepreneurs today was 1.56% of total population, still below the international standard of 2% of total population

By theory, tertiary schools were believed to have their comparative advantage in playing their role to fulfill UKMK’s need. For example in terms of human resources capacity, technical counseling, and to build the spirit of entrepreneurship as well as capital management. Why was incubators needed to develop UKM ? The answer was because the number of national entrepreneurs were still Low. Therefore incubator centers under university guidance were highly potential to promote UMKM capacity.

Today the pioneering effort to develop incubators sponsored by four national universities had succeeded in making entrepreneurs through publicizing. Deputy of Small Business Resources Development of the Ministry of Cooperatives and UKM Meliadi Sembiring stated in Jakarta on Monday [14/4] that the development of business incubators in four universities was in accordance with Government’s agenda as written in UMKM business through business incubators. The Ministrial Regulation authorized all legal bodies to conduct businessplayers’ development through business incubators.

The four national tertiary schools which had pioneered in incubator education system and succeeded in training the tenants were the Bogor Institute of Technology, ITS Surabaya, and the Brawidjaja, University Malang. Each tertiary school had their own specification in promoting competence of UMKM.

According to Meliadi, through illumination to all provinces the business incubator program was expected to develop. The successful effort of universities to promote competence of small businessplayers might trigger other institutions to set up incubator centers. According to its function, the technology based development center was to help newly established UMKM. With the touch of incubators, it was expected that the related regions would perform economically well.

Meliadi disclosed that he was probing on collaboration possibilities with members of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation [APEC] to develop incubators for each member country for UKM players. The prioritized collaboration was with Taiwan which had some incubator facilities.

He further disclosed that the Ministry of cooperatives and UKM had made use of incubators managed by state and private universities in Indonesia, but Muliadi felt that to collaborate with APEC member countries would bring positive impact, i.e. the opportunity to develop entrepreneurship among Indonesian overseas workers [TKI] in Taiwan scattered in many cities. A program was as such was often conducted by the Ministry in countries where TKI worked.

According to Meliadi, this was in line with APEC Small Medium Enterprise Working Group 2014 which came up with important points to be implemented for the benefit of businessplayers of the real sector in each respective member country. One of them was readiness of UKM to face natural disaster. APEC agreed to set up Business Continuity Plans [BCAP] to facilitate UKM of the trading and investment sector. (SS)   

Business New - April 21, 2014

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