Trade Minister to Meet Village Minister to Discuss Proposed Regulation of Modern Retail Expansion

Jakarta (ANTARA) – The Minister of Trade, Budi Santoso, stated that he will be meeting with the Minister of Villages, Disadvantaged Regions Development and Transmigration, Yandri Susanto, to discuss a proposal to regulate the expansion of modern retail stores after village cooperatives are established.

“I plan to meet with Mr. Mendes. I’m not yet sure what his intentions are,” said Budi after inspecting local MSME products at the KAI Services business network in Jakarta, on Tuesday.

Budi said that the proposal needs to be discussed further to ensure the purpose and objectives of halting the expansion of retail chains are clear.

Meanwhile, the Director General of Domestic Trade at the Ministry of Trade, Iqbal Shoffan Shofwan, said that the regulation of modern retail has been set out in Law Number 7 of 2014 concerning Trade and Government Regulation Number 29 of 2021.

The issuance of business licenses for modern retail is also carried out through the Online Single Submission (OSS) system with validation from local governments.

Furthermore, Iqbal said that currently, most modern retail stores, such as Alfamart and Indomaret, are only located in urban areas and have not yet expanded to remote areas. Meanwhile, village cooperatives have a wider reach, extending to remote areas.

“These networked modern retail stores are still located in urban areas. The reason is that when they establish a store, they always calculate the demographics and the income of the residents. So, until now, we rarely find networked modern retail stores in villages,” said Iqbal.

Iqbal said that modern retail and village cooperatives each have their own market share. According to him, cooperatives are given priority to accommodate products from each village.

In the future, it is possible that cooperatives will expand to market products that can be produced by micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) that are not from their village.

He also emphasised that the presence of modern retail stores will not cause problems for village cooperatives. According to him, the two entities can actually establish partnerships.