Entrepreneurship is one of the most important business and backbone sectors in the country’s development, along with corporations, cooperatives, finance, and banking. To build Indonesia to become a more advanced country, it takes a lot of entrepreneurship. The requirement to be a developed country is to have an entrepreneur at least 2 percent of the total population. The number of Indonesian entrepreneurs only reached 3.1 percent of the total population. This ratio is still lower than other countries such as Malaysia 5 percent, China 10 percent, Singapore 7 percent, Japan 11 percent and United States 12 percent. (Puspayoga, 2015) This amount is of course still far from the amount needed.

Currently the number of Indonesian businessmen is less than neighboring countries. Therefore, the entrepreneurship creation program is needed to give birth to new entrepreneurs.  Entrepreneurs basically have a tendency to continue to innovate and bring new technology to win the market competition and improve the nation’s competitiveness. In addition, it also created many jobs so that the unemployment rate can be suppressed. The development of local Indonesian entrepreneurs will strengthen the domestic competitiveness, so that in the long term it can reduce dependence on foreign markets.

Furthermore, the role of entrepreneurs in the Indonesian economy plays a very important role for the economic sustainability and competitiveness of the country. A country should have the entrepreneurial aspect if the country will become advance (Schumpeter 1949). Consumption is high in one country is not enough, because it is possible the big consumption is in Import. An entrepreneur can make sustainable development in a country because it encourages investment in a country. Entrepreneurship play important role to get economic growth because it contributes to the investment, and finally got the income per capita. (remember GDP/Y = C+I+G+ (Export-Import). A country ideally has 2% of the population who become entrepreneurs. In 2013, in Indonesia there are 1.65 percent of entrepreneurs from about 200 million inhabitants of this country, so the opportunity to become entrepreneurs is still very open.

Entrepreneurs are frequently thought of as national assets to be cultivated, motivated and remunerated to the greatest possible extent. These are the several reasons why the entrepreneurship is important in Indonesia:

  1. Entrepreneurs can change the way we live and work. If successful, their innovations may improve our standard of living, and in addition to creating wealth with their entrepreneurial ventures.
  2. Entrepreneurs create jobs and the conditions for a prosperous society. Many people who entrepreneurial ultimately require additional labor to fill certain parts of the position. Impact accompaniment must be related to the economic value associated with a person’s income.
  3. The development of local Indonesian entrepreneurs will strengthen domestic needs, so that in the long term it can reduce dependence on foreign markets. If an area there is activity that is conducive and stable entrepreneurship, will directly provide economic value to the surrounding community. This entrepreneurial activity will certainly require a workforce that can be taken from individuals who are near the business area. With the absorption of labor in a region, the economic activity is increasing, and the income earned also increases, and ultimately increase the economic level of both the business owner and employee.
  4. Improve the economic stability of the Indonesian nation. Strong Entrepreneurs are strong and with a lot of numbers make this nation more solid in maintaining the economic stability of the nation. A stable economy makes this nation strong against the storm of financial crisis or global crisis that might happen anytime. The stability of the nation’s economy is due to the support of employers who provide jobs for the wider community.

References

Puspayoga, AAG  (2015).  at the National Self-Employed Entrepreneur Program. Jakarta.

Schumpeter, Joseph A., 1949. Theory of Economic Development. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.