Legislators wants small business to be protected
JAKARTA (JP): Small businesses not only have limited access to government facilities and protection, but have even become victims of economic policies, the Indonesian Democratic Party's (PDI) faction at the House of Representatives said yesterday.
"Small traders are often evicted from their locations when the government modernizes traditional markets," a spokesman for the faction, Marsinggih Marnadi, said in a House plenary session on the small enterprises bill.
He said more than 30 million small entrepreneurs and tens of thousands of vendors must be waiting for their chance to deal with fair and conducive businesses.
The faction disagrees with using the term "the weaker economic group" in the bill because empirical data proves that small businesses are often tougher and more resistant against economic recession.
However, fair and conducive chances for small businesses will never occur unless the government dissolves current monopolistic, oligopolistic, oligopsonistic and cartel practices, as well as collusion and corruption, said Marsinggih.
He, therefore, urged that the House and the government draft anti-cartel and anti-monopoly bills.
The other factions -- Golkar, the Armed Forces and the United Development Party (PPP) -- of the House agreed with the PDI faction, saying that any relationship between the big and small businesses should not be established out of mercy or charity, let alone gift offering.
It is compulsory for big companies to foster small ones, while small ones have the right to advance in a complimentary scheme.
It should be in terms of the empowerment of the small, said the spokesmen for the factions.
Simon Patrice Morin of the Golkar faction told the session that the "distortive" economic and market structure must be changed into a more conducive one.
"The government, for example, should ease licensing procedures for small businesses and protect them by providing venues which are close to living and working areas," Simon said.
A.M. Saefuddin of the PPP faction noted that the low quality of human resources still hampers the improvement of small enterprises.
Minister of Cooperatives and Small Enterprises Subiakto Tjakrawerdaya, who represented the government at yesterday's session, told the press after the meeting that people often blame conglomerates for the slow growth of small businesses.
"It is probably because conglomerates have assisted only few of the so many existing small businesses," said Subiakto.
He said the government responded positively upon conglomerate owners' recent vow to provide assistance for small businesses.
After following a course on the implementation of the state ideology Pancasila in business activities in Bali last month, about 100 conglomerate owners issued the Bali Declaration, saying that they would make efforts to help small businesses.
The minister agreed with the factions' proposals to use the term of empowerment instead of protection and guidance for small businesses.(kod)