CORE: Regulations to Create Mutually Beneficial Business Relationships Between SMEs and Platforms

Jakarta (ANTARA) - Mohammad Faisal, Executive Director of the Center of Reform on Economics (CORE) Indonesia, believes that appropriate regulations from the government can provide certainty for mutually beneficial business relationships between micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) and digital platforms such as e-commerce marketplaces. “This is what the government must address to ensure more mutually beneficial business relationships between e-commerce platforms and MSMEs,” Faisal said when contacted in Jakarta on Monday. Faisal’s opinion responds to recent complaints from MSME actors about the high administrative and logistics costs charged by the digital trading platforms they use. The government, through the Ministry of Trade (Kemendag), is currently preparing revisions to Minister of Trade Regulation (Permendag) No. 31 of 2023 on business licensing, advertising, guidance, and supervision of business actors in electronic commerce. Faisal assessed that the high service costs on e-commerce and marketplace platforms also affect business decisions of sellers, particularly MSME actors who have relied on these virtual markets to market and sell their products more widely. “The bargaining position becomes stronger, so when there is a cost increase, for example, logistics costs due to factors like war or energy and so on, and then the e-commerce platform, which is in a higher bargaining position, when there is cost pressure, usually passes it on to its partners,” he said. “Therefore, there are problems if there are issues related to cost increases, market access, business relationship relations with e-commerce platform partners, and so on; this must be responded to in order to ensure that MSMEs can truly obtain space to develop their businesses,” he added.