Prabowo Orders Village Cooperatives to Begin Operations October 15, With 15,000 Inspections in Eight Days
Coordinating Minister for Food Affairs Zulkifli Hasan said on October 14 that President Prabowo Subianto had called him twice the previous day, and had also given direct instructions to the president director of state company Agrinas, ordering the Merah Putih (Red and White) Village Cooperatives to begin operating simultaneously on October 15, according to reporting by Kompas and other Indonesian media. Zulkifli conveyed the order while leading a limited coordination meeting at his office.
He said he had mobilised the relevant ministries and agencies, and ordered governors, regents, mayors and the Indonesian military leadership to take to the field. Over eight days starting October 15, officials will monitor the cooperatives' operations, targeting inspections of 15,000 cooperatives, with each official targeted to inspect ten cooperatives per day. The checks cover the availability of cooperative managers, fertiliser supplies, and banking agents such as BRILink, Bank Negara Indonesia, Bank Mandiri and Pos Indonesia.
After the eight days, the government will meet again to evaluate, with all preparations required to be in place by October 20 and a full-scale evaluation scheduled for October 25.
The village cooperatives are one of President Prabowo's flagship programmes to stimulate rural economies. As Reuters previously reported, state company PT Agrinas Pangan Nusantara is building 80,000 cooperative stores in villages across the archipelago, funded by 240 trillion rupiah of low-interest loans from four state banks; the cooperatives are intended to sell government-subsidised products such as fertiliser and cooking gas, buy local produce and offer cheap loans to villagers.
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：印度尼西亚总统普拉博沃·苏比延多官方肖像。摄影：Darwis Triadi、印尼国家秘书部，公有领域，来源：Wikimedia Commons
