Halal Certification Shifts from Compliance to Competitiveness for Indonesian MSMEs

The Deputy for Entrepreneurship at the Ministry of MSMEs, Riza Damanik, stated that halal certification is no longer just a label indicating compliance but has shifted towards an effort to increase the competitiveness of business products to enter a wider market. “So, there has been a good shift from one side of the compliance context, fearing a sudden inspection, to now seeing it as a stage that must be passed in order to encourage more competitiveness, better productivity, and improved sales in the future,” Riza said during an Islamic Financial Dialogue event in Jakarta on Wednesday. He noted that the trend of halal certification among micro, small, and medium enterprises has increased over the past two years. This is evident because of a paradigm shift nationally, regionally, and globally that halal certification is an effort to increase competitiveness to enter modern retail markets and reach the middle-class segment that is increasingly concerned about halal and healthy products. Riza said that in 2024, 733,000 business actors registered for halal certification, and in 2025, 1.2 million halal certificates were issued. Meanwhile, data for the first quarter of 2026 shows that more than 2.9 million MSME entrepreneurs have been involved in registering their businesses for halal certificates, and a total of 3.72 million halal certificates have been issued. Up to the first quarter of 2026, more than 10.1 million products have obtained halal certificates. “The figure today is much larger than this, and of course, looking at this data, we want to say that our achievements this year are estimated to be higher than in 2025,” Riza said. This growth shows that MSME entrepreneurs are increasingly realising that halal certification can be used as a profitable business investment. He said there needs to be an aggressive effort in literacy, procedural ease, and digital integration for issuing halal certificates to realise real economic growth through a more inclusive sharia scheme. With halal certification, MSMEs gain legitimacy and credibility in the eyes of consumers, banks, and large industry partners, which will ultimately drive more inclusive and sustainable national economic growth.