Ministry of Villages Partners with Stakeholders to Boost Export Village Programme

The government is promoting villages as engines of new economic growth through strengthened market access and cross-sector collaboration. The export village scheme is projected to be one of the main levers for increasing value addition at the local level.

The Ministry of Villages, Development of Underdeveloped Regions, and Transmigration (Kemendes PDT) is partnering with various parties to accelerate village development. This collaboration was marked by the signing of memorandums of understanding in Jakarta on Tuesday (28/4/2026).

Minister of Villages, Development of Underdeveloped Regions, and Transmigration Yandri Susanto stated that village development requires the involvement of many parties. “We are a support team, not superheroes. Everyone must be involved and have villages to mentor,” said Yandri.

Yandri assessed that a collaborative approach is necessary to address various village challenges, from limited electricity, signal dead zones, access to clean water, to education. He emphasised that villages must be the subjects of development. “If villages advance, then Indonesia will advance,” said Yandri.

In this collaboration, the development of export villages is one of the focuses. This programme is part of the national village development priorities to expand market access and increase community income.

General Chairman of Barisan 8 Center Andrio Caesario said that support is directed towards opening international market access for village products. “We are helping how natural resource outputs in villages can be channelled to export markets and provide great benefits for farmers,” said Andrio.

He added that West Java is one of the pilot regions with Arabica coffee commodities. “We want to elevate West Java coffee to become one of the world’s primadonnas,” said Andrio.

In addition to market access, an application for mapping village potentials based on geotagging is being prepared. This system contains data on land area, commodity quality, to production chains to facilitate information access for buyers. “Buyers can know the village’s potential from upstream to downstream of the product,” said Andrio.

Kemendes targets around 5,000 export villages in the coming years. The government assesses that ongoing mentoring is necessary so that the programme runs effectively and impacts village economic improvement.