"I have made three pleas to craft and creative industry entrepreneurs in Indonesia to keep their products on spec or meet the buyers specifications, keep the budget or price at a reasonable rate, and timely delivery of the products," he stated at the Jakarta Convention Center on Wednesday.
Inacraft exhibition, which will be held from April 26 to April 30, will exhibit products from 1,392 local and foreign participants. This year, Inacraft has taken Yogyakarta as the icon, under the concept "Magnificent of Yogyakarta" and the theme "From Smart Village to Global Market."
The second plea from the president was regarding the packaging of the products.
"Do not forget the packaging. Make the best you can and make it interesting. This is important because most of time, the packaging is what attracts the buyers," he added.
His third plea was to deliver the goods on time.
"The delivery to the consumers could be made easier with various logistics infrastructures that we already have," he stated.
Jokowi also pushed the entrepreneurs to make use of the governments people credits program (KUR).
"I understand the entrepreneurs problems regarding capital. Therefore, I remind the people of the KUR program, which has an interest rate of nine percent only. Hence, the products should be made better to make the investment bigger. I think our credit programs have a competitive interest rate too," he reiterated.
Indonesian Exporter and Handicraft Producers (ASEPHI) data, the committee of the exhibition, remarked that the Inacraft 2017 attendees included 65.95 percent of independent individuals, 24.5 percent from the Tourism Department, 8.7 percent from BUMN, and the rest 6.07 percent from other countries such as Myanmar, Japan, Pakistan, Poland, and India.
This year, Inacraft has set a target of retail business increase of 10 percent, which reaches Rp142 billion, commercial contract of US$12 million, and around 200 thousand buyers from various countries.
Some of the products exhibited include batik, fashion apparels, accessories, jewelries, and other crafts.(*)
Editor: Heru Purwanto
Copyright © ANTARA 2017
