Cooperatives to Rise as a Major Force in Indonesia's Economy: President Prabowo

RRI CO.ID, Jakarta - Indonesian President, Prabowo Subianto, underscored that cooperatives are one of the pillars of Indonesia's economic strength. He likened cooperatives to a traditional twig broom, which binds many individual twigs together to create strength.

"A cooperative is a tool for the weak, a tool for the poor. It's like a twig broom... a single twig is weak. But when they are bound together into a broom, that is strength," Prabowo said during the 79th National Cooperatives Day celebration in Jakarta on Sunday, July 12, 2026.

"Don't worry, the Indonesian cooperative movement will rise to become a major economic force in Indonesia," he conveyed.

However, Prabowo said that cooperatives are only one of the various pillars of Indonesia's economy, alongside other forms of business organizations. According to him, this is in line with the vision of Indonesia's founding leaders, who wanted cooperatives to be one of the main foundations of the country's economy.

"Because Indonesia is a large country, we need cooperatives, we need micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises, we need the private sector, we need state-owned enterprises, we need regionally owned enterprises, we need all of them. Together, they must become the strength of our economy," he said.

Before becoming President, Prabowo had long-standing ties with various cooperatives, including serving as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Indonesian Village Unit Cooperatives Association (INKUD), the umbrella organization for village unit cooperatives, during the 2010s. He claimed that cooperatives have always stood by him and considers their leaders to be part of his family.

"I truly feel that the cooperative movement is my family. Even though I lost the presidential election several times, I always felt that the cooperative movement stood by me," he said.

Indonesia celebrates National Cooperatives Day every July 12 to commemorate the opening of the First Cooperative Congress in Tasikmalaya on July 12, 1947. Since 2025, under Prabowo's administration, the Ministry of Cooperatives has once again been established as a standalone ministry, after previously existing in that form during the 1960s and 1970s.

Prabowo has a landmark Red and White Village/Subdistrict Cooperatives (KDKMP) program, an initiative to build a cooperative in every Indonesian village. Minister of Cooperatives, Ferry Juliantono, said that about 83,000 such cooperatives have been legally established, and 15,845 of them have already been built.