Portrait of SMEs in Indonesia


Indonesia is a country that really has the potential to become extraordinary large and the nation forward. Our country consists of thousands of islands that is rich in various natural wealth. From natural underground sources, such as oil and gas, property and forest land, to the sea.

However, many potential and natural riches that we have apparently not yet at an optimal termanfaatkan for the welfare of communities. The amount of the total population followed by the less quality resources, human beings. Compared to other countries, including the quality of people that Indonesia is very low.


See the challenges, there are at least two major issues that will be still and will always be faced by our nation in times to come. The first problem is poverty and unemployment. Issues such as this parasite, which is always the president or anyone menggelayuti officials elected to lead this country.

Number of unemployment in Indonesia, the increase only. According to the Central Bureau of Statistics (BPS), the number of unemployment in 2005 reached 40.6 million people. From this amount as much as 11 million people are unemployed or have no open job at all to sustain their lives. While the rest, that is about 30 million people are unemployed or half-open does not have a permanent job. Half this group of unemployment, if the average earnings perbulannya does not reach Rp 150 ribu.

Number of open unemployment is actually quite worrying. Moreover, viewed from the background study. Open unemployment is a primary school as much as 2.4 million people, followed by as many as 2.6 million junior high school, high school graduates and 3.9 million people. Meanwhile, who recorded a high of 707 thousand people consisting of 385 thousand graduates, 215 diploma thousand III, and 107 thousand people diploma I. This unemployment problem appears to still be growing because the economic recovery of our slow progress.

The process of economic recovery after the monetary crisis in 1998 have not shown a meaningful increase. This we can see from the opening of new employment which is very slow. Even BPS in 2003 noted the occurrence of a contraction of employment reached 1.2 million. This amount is divided into 656 thousand employment opportunities in urban areas and 564 thousand jobs in the rural areas are missing.

This fact shows that many of the labor force have not be merged in the formal sector of economy. Meanwhile, to enter into non-formal sector, they also do not have enough stock of skills to create economically productive.

While the second problem concerning the entrepreneurial mentality of our society to a low. The large amount of unemployment in our country other than related to the education system that has not been able to provide graduates in optimizing the potential itself is also related to the entrepreneurial mentality that our society be regarded low. (*)