Last Monday, March 28, the Ministry of Cooperatives and SMEs held a National Coordination Meeting on Digital Transformation and Complete Data Collection of KUMKM 2022, which was opened and attended by the President of the Republic of Indonesia, Joko Widodo. On that occasion, the General Chair of idEA Bima Laga had the opportunity to be a panelist on Working Group 1, which discussed the theme of Digitizing KUMKM towards a Digital Economy. The Working Group, which was also chaired by Siti Azizah as Deputy for Entrepreneurship at the Ministry of Cooperatives for SMEs, M. Rudy Salahudin as Deputy for Coordination of the Digital Economy, Employment & MSMEs at the Coordinating Ministry for the Economy, and Peter Shearer as CEO of Wahyoo had several main discussion points, including mapping of strategic target groups/ priorities in efforts to digitally transform KUMKM, sharing methods and strategies in conducting digital transformation of KUMKM, as well as what efforts can be made to accelerate digitalization to accelerate the growth of new entrepreneurs.

Among the topics of discussion, Bima Laga was trusted to be the main panelist to discuss methods and best practices for digital transformation of SMEs. In his presentation, Bima expressed his optimism about the progress of digitizing MSMEs in Indonesia, referring to data from Google Temasek which states that the value of digital economic transactions in Indonesia in 2021 will reach 70 billion US dollars, with the potential for new digital consumers to grow by 20%. However, Bima also said that currently business management skills and access to capital are still challenges for MSMEs. For this reason, idEA invites all parties, both government and private, to collaborate, both in terms of providing education, training, capital assistance to making regulations that make it easier for MSMEs.