The Ciptaker Law is Like a Vaccine for Economic Recovery during a Pandemic
By: Rahmat Soleh) *
The Covid-19 pandemic has devastated many sectors including the economy, so a special formula is needed to be able to free Indonesia from Pandemic status. One of them is the Job Creation Law as a vaccine during the pandmei era which helps boost national economic growth and the creation of many new jobs.
The government is targeting that by 2021 the economy will grow by between 4.5 and 5.5%. The current rule of thumb is that with 1% economic growth, 500 thousand new jobs will be created. This means that next year it may only be able to provide 2.5 million new jobs for the nation’s children. In the following years, the numbers probably won’t change much if we don’t make a breakthrough. Meanwhile, the number of unemployed and new job seekers is far greater.
In the context of research and innovation, there are at least two benefits that can be realized from the implementation of the Job Creation Law, which in turn is expected to be a vaccine during a pandemic so that it helps boost the economic pace.
Article 121 of the Job Creation Law, which seeks to encourage participation in innovation research in the regions, explains that the implementation of research and innovation can be sourced from various alternatives of rich natural resources and competent and innovative human beings in the region, without leaving local wisdom and aimed at for the development of innovation, starting from the ideas and innovators of the individual.
Indonesian President Joko Widodo said, the Covid-19 Pandemic must be a trigger to catch up in Indonesia in all sectors, one of which is by opening jobs.
This, said Jokowi, created the Job Creation Law. With the hope of accelerating industrialization in the country and strengthening the strategic sector, especially health food, energy funds.
The former Mayor of Surakarta explained that every major change often raises concerns and misunderstandings. Moreover, Jokowi’s words were not well communicated in sufficient time, so socialization needed to be done.
On a different occasion, Minister of Cooperatives and SMEs (Menkop UKM) Teten Masduki said the Job Creation Law would be able to strengthen the position of UMKM cooperatives in the supply chain.
According to Teten, the Job Creation Law also provides strengthening and protection against competition with large businesses, increasing the competence and level of MSME business, by providing facilitation for MSMEs to enter the industrial supply chain.
He continued, there are still important points in the Job Creation Law that facilitate the development of KUMKM in Indonesia.
Of course, the Job Creation Law answers the main problems for cooperatives and MSMEs so far, including access to permits, supply chain access, access to business development, access to finance, to market access.
The Job Creation Law is considered to increase the ability of MSMEs to absorb labor and grow the entrepreneurial ratio (local start-up) with the ease of business licensing and the implementation of business incubations.
In fact, the Job Creation Law also supports the acceleration of the digitization of MSMEs by providing convenience through training and assistance in the use of systems / applications in each line of the MSME business process and business incubation, to create innovation and technology-based MSMEs.
Through the Job Creation Law, micro and small business actors will get free halal certification from the government.
According to Teten, so far, halal certification has become a burden for MSMEs, because it is considered difficult and expensive in terms of processing. This has an impact on the micro business sector which rarely has halal certification.
In fact, according to Teten, this halal label is very important to provide added value and competitiveness of MSMEs. Especially for MSMEs in the health and security sector, apart from halal certificates, Indonesian national standards (SNI) are also needed.
He also said that 97 percent of employment in Indonesia was carried out by the MSME sector. To grow and develop and have strong competitiveness.
Currently the unemployment rate is more than 7 million people, if we add 3 million new layoffs, this condition will certainly not be easy. So that it requires vaccine-like regulations that regulate MSME licensing, financing, market access, and supply chain improvements.
) * The author is a citizen living in Tangerang