Jakarta, Saturday 27 August 2022
title Muslim Life Fest & trade which was held for 3 days at ICE BSD (26-28 August 2002) became one of the driving forces calculated by the National Committee for Sharia Economics and Finance (KNEKS) towards Indonesia, the world's halal product producer center in 2024. A total of 650 buyers were invited and did business matchmaking with These 150 hybrid and offline business actors are ready to make long-term business commitments.
Chairman of the Indonesian Muslim Entrepreneurs Community (KPMI), Rachmat Marpaung said, the business actors presented in the business matchmaking had passed curation and received assistance, one of which was through the Export Academy program developed by KPMI together with the Nudira Learning Center, Aspenku.com and Hibbu. Creative House.
“In this program, KPMI provides an e-course ecosystem as a starting point for business actors to learn about exporting. Business actors will receive practical export technical mentoring, either through learning videos based on SKKNI (Indonesian National Work Competency Standards), and offline through intensive mentoring," said Rachmat at the grand launching of the Export Academy at the Muslim Life Fest.
In practice, how to understand the needs of the export market, business actors can directly market their products on Aspenku.com, which is an export digital platform to optimize MSME products as well as act as export emulators, distribution centers and fulfillment partners abroad.
Dr. Taufik Hidayat, M.Ec, Executive Director, Executive Management of the National Sharia Economics and Finance Committee (KNEKS) at the opening of the Muslim Life Fest & Trade, appreciated the efforts made by Five Events together with KPMI who have been fully committed and consistent since 2019 to mobilize the potential of halal products and the sharia industry in various regions. "We must fully encourage this effort in preparing export-quality SME halal products. Because the market opportunity is so big, not only domestically, but also abroad.
“So far, we have competed with other countries that we didn't even expect, such as Brazil, Australia, which incidentally have non-Muslim residents but can become world halal producers. Indonesia, which has all the potential, God willing, we just need to push it even harder to become a global player," he said on the sidelines of the Muslim Life Fest 2022 event.
Therefore, continued Taufik, KNEKS will continue to make efforts to increase the scale of MSME products to the global market. These include strengthening literacy, entrepreneurship education, and making it easier for MSMEs to get access to financing.
Taufik also explained several criteria that must be met by SMEs in order to be able to export. Starting from products that must have attractiveness, product quality that is in accordance with standards in export destination countries, packaging, marketing, financing, to competitive product prices.
“The government has also started to form Regional Committees for Sharia Economics and Finance (KDEKS) in all provinces, chaired by the Governor. Currently, KDEKS already exists in the provinces of West Nusa Tenggara (NTB), West Sumatra, and Riau. "Later, KPMI can synergize with KDEKS so that the export scale of SME halal products can be increased," he said.
One of the SME players who have exported and joined Aspenku.com in the Muslim Life Fest event is Euis Rohaini from CV Rajasa Mas Jaya who is engaged in batik and handicraft production.
"For batik products, we started moving since 2008. But for handicraft products, it only started in 2016," he said.
He said that he was initially interested in making handicraft products from convection waste and bamboo. At that time, Euis saw a lot of batik patchwork waste and was confused about what to make. Finally, he thought of creating a new product by combining it with bamboo crafts for decoration.
"Thank God, after that (making handicrafts), we got orders from Saudi Arabian buyers in 2016. We managed to send 5 containers to Saudi Arabia within 1 year," he said.
“So at that time, initially I participated in an export exhibition. Then met with buyers from Saudi Arabia. He told me that he only stayed in Indonesia for two weeks. But I said this has to be a deal. Finally, after going back and forth from Cilacap to Jakarta, taking care of various documents and adjusting requests from buyers, they were finally able to export to Saudi Arabia,” he said.
In 2020, exports of their products abroad were forced to stop due to the Covid-19 pandemic. However, he admits that he has learned a lot from this pandemic. For example, he learned more about exports by participating in various online trainings to joining Aspenku and adding to his network.
With the presence of Muslim Life Trade at the Muslim Life Fest 2022 event, according to him, it is a very valuable opportunity to get to know each other, network, negotiate with buyers from abroad.
“I just started the matching business with buyers from the Philippines and Tunisia. Just follow up after this and it has led to collaboration. I think Muslim Life Trade is good, even though what is needed in foreign countries is mostly food products, spices and other premier goods,” he said.
For SME players who want to export and their products can be accepted by the global market, he gives tips, first, the mindset to want to change, never give up, pay close attention to the market, network (collaborate). For capital, there is no need to worry too much, because currently there are many financial institutions that are ready to support SME capital based on sharia.
Entering the second day of the Muslim Life Fest, it was packed with more than 20 thousand visitors. Director of Lima Events, Deddy Andu, said that the enthusiasm of visitors who had filled the exhibition area from the morning was because this event was packaged more friendly for family tourism. "Not only shopping for halal products, sharing parenting with child observers, we also present a variety of games at the Kids Corner," said Deddy Andu.
Deddy is optimistic, the number of visitors until the closing day can reach 40 thousand visitors. Because various interesting events from morning to night are held simultaneously in several places and exhibition stands.
Sunnah.
