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Trade ministry teams up with idEA to create platform for SMEs
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A small shopping cart sits on top of a laptop keyboard to illustrate the ease of e-commerce. (Shutterstock/File)
T
rade Minister Enggartiasto Lukita said on Thursday that his ministry would team up with the Indonesia E-Commerce Association (idEA) to create a platform to enable small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to boost their sales on the local online market.
“Many SMEs are not well-informed about the latest technology. That’s what prevents their products from being able to compete against foreign products,” Enggartiasto said after a meeting with idEA at his office on Thursday.
Enggartiasto said that SMEs wanting to showcase their products had to pass a selection process and were required to provide clear information about the products they would market.
Meanwhile, head of idEA’s retail education division Mohamad Rosihan explained that the platform would be equipped with a tutorial facility, with which SMEs could learn about various strategies to boost the sales of their products.
“The platform itself is still under construction. So I cannot tell you yet when it will be released,” he told The Jakarta Post. “On behalf of idEA, I hope the government will prove its commitment to developing local SMEs.”
Separately, Industry Minister Airlangga Hartanto suggested that the government needed to impose a light income tax of about 0.5 percent for e-commerce traders because many e-commerce players were still struggling to develop their businesses.
"With a low tax rate, more SMEs could join the online marketplace, which is currently dominated by imported products,” he said on Thursday, as quoted by tempo.co. (dpk/bbn)
