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2007/SMEWG25/002

Agenda item: 1

Opening Address by Indonesian Minister of Cooperatives and SMEs

Purpose: Information

Submitted by: Indonesia

/ 25th Small and Medium Enterprises Working Group Meeting Bali, Indonesia
28-30 August 2007

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Distinguished delegates

Ladies and gentlemen

Assalamu’alaikum wr. wb.

Good morning

First of all, I would like to welcome all of you to the beautiful place of Kuta, at the paradiseIsland of Bali. I am very much delighted to see you here on The Opening Ceremony of the 25th Meeting of APEC Small and Medium Enterprises Working Group. I would also like to express our sincere gratitude to all APEC member economies for choosing Indonesia to host this meeting.

This meeting is very important, since it is for the first time we merge two Working Groups into one meeting,those are the SMEs Working Group (SMEWG) and the Working Group of Trade Promotion (WGTP).This step is taken toenable us to come up with a more comprehensive strategic platform for our economic cooperation and to produce tangible results for the sake of SME development in the region.

Ladies and gentlemen,

In Indonesian economic development, SMEs play important roles. They all have contributed to job creationthat amounts to around 79 million employments or 99.4 per-cent of the total employments. In addition, micro, small and medium enterprises havecontributed no less than 56.7 percent to our total Gross Domestic Products (GDP).Furthermore, micro, small and medium enterprises have shown their strengthwhen Indonesia was hit by economic crisies started in 1997. This is a clear evidence that, micro, small and medium enterprises play a very important role, not only forjob creation and economic growth but also for poverty alleviation.

Ladies and gentlemen,

We share our common base under Asia-Pacific identity within APEC forum. We always share the sense of togetherness, eventhough in reality, we have various cultural background and different stage of development. But once Asia-Pacific Forum and its sub-forum had firmly been accepted, it is our taskto keep this forum moving forward to bridge our development gaps especially in collective effort to promote SMEs development through economic cooperation.

In many of our member economies, challenges are still rampant such as unemployment, people living under poverty,insufficient of education and so forth. In addition, globalizationconfront our SMEs from many directions. All of those issues are very close to the daily life of our SMEs, since mostly of them are working as the grass root level. Promoting SMEs in most of our economies, I believe, is a must, not only for the sake of accelerating and stabilizing economic development, but also for a wider dimension of the development it self.

This merging forum of SMEWG and TPWG, therefore, is very relevant vehicle to response to the challenges faced by SMEs, particularly, challenges related to our effort to promote SMEsto penetrate international markets. In my opinion most economies are facing three typical challenges in formulating supporting and affirmative policies namely: 1) how to ensure that SMEs will find it easy to doing business internationally. We have to ensure that they remain competitive as the trade and investment liberalization comes into reality, 2) how to ensure that there aresufficient supports given to SMEs to enable them to adapt themselves to competitive environment, 3) for those SMEs, particularly for most of our micro enterprises who are not willing to engage in international, at least we have to ensure that they will not become the victims of globalization.

I do believe that this meeting will consider the important issues related to internationalization of SMEs. Our main challenge, therefore, is how to come up with excellent strategic framework, enabling driven initiative, to produce maximum impact on SMEs development, to accommodate the interest of member economies with various stage of development and to come up with clear collective results.

Ladies and gentlemen,

It is my pleasure to hear that in this important meeting there will be a brief presentation by Mr Sulaeman, Mr Untung Sarono Wiyono and MissAnne Ahira.Mr Sulaeman from Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI) will share his experience in providing credit to MSEs, Mr Untung Sarono Wiyono, Head of Sragen District, Central Java will share his experiences in providing One Stop Services. Miss Anne Ahira a young entrepreneur to present her experiences in international marketing activities. Some of you may wonder who is this young lady. She was awarded to be the best marketer for internet marketing category. I believetheir presentation will inspire us on how SMEs business could be developed locally and internationally.

Finally, I would like to thank all the sponsors who have given their supports to this meeting, especially to Indonesian Central Bank (Bank Indonesia), Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI), andinparticular to Acer Indonesia,for sponsoring for the fist time, of our paperless meeting.

I would like also to thank APEC Secretariat to strengthen our ties more closely and more solid and for its hard working to make this meeting possible.Lastly, I would like to extend my sincere appreciation to the on going chair of SMEWG, Australia, for excellentleading roles to keep this forum productive and moving forward.

To all delegates, once again I do hope that you will have very fruitful deliberation in this meeting and you will find Balias a memorable and enjoyable place to stay.

Thank you.

Wassalamu’alaikum wr.wb.

Suryadharma Ali

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