ENTREPRENEURSHIP DEVELOPMENT: SMES IN INDONESIA

The Indonesian government has been trying to encourage entrepreneurship development by supporting the development of small and medium enterprises in the country, since these enterprises provide an avenue for the testing and development of entrepreneurial ability. This paper examines the current developments of SMEs in the country. The paper comes with a number of interesting facts. First, SMEs are of overwhelming importance in Indonesia, as they account for more than 90 percent of all firms outside the agricultural sector, and thus are the biggest source of employment. Second, the representation of women entrepreneurs is low. Third, women entrepreneurs are less educated than their men counterparts. Fourth, the main constraints faced by small entrepreneurs are lack of working capital and marketing difficulties. Finally, the majority of existing studies suggest that the effectiveness of government programs to support SME development programs is low. The paper concludes that in national efforts to develop high competitive entrepreneurships, owners of small enterprises should be given the first priority as they have some previous experience of running a business or of how to survive in competitive markets, and the emphasis should be to promote modernization, capacity building and size upgrading.