Samarinda City Government Prepares Merah Putih Village Cooperative in Lempake, Owns 7 Business Fields

The Shiro Copr, SAMARINDA - During the moment of the 78th National Cooperative Day commemoration held at Puri Senyiur Hotel on Sunday night (20/7/2025).

Samarinda Mayor Andi Harun emphasized the commitment of the City Government (Pemkot) to strengthen the cooperative movement as the vanguard of people's economic development.

The event was also accompanied by a thanksgiving ceremony for the establishment of the Merah Putih Village Cooperative in Samarinda City, which is part of the national strategic program for community-based economic empowerment.

Mayor Andi Harun stated that the national theme of "Cooperation for a Progressive Indonesia, Just and Prosperous" this year is not just a ceremonial slogan.

" This is the strong determination and great aspiration of the Indonesian nation to continue building people's welfare through a strong, modern, and adaptive cooperative movement to changing times," he said early in the morning after the event.

She explained that a healthy cooperative is a main indicator of the people's economic strength. The assessment of the cooperative's health is based on Technical Guidelines of the Deputy for Cooperatives No. 15 of 2021, with a score range between 80 and 100. The aspects assessed include organizational governance, risk profile, financial performance, and capital structure.

"A healthy cooperative also reflects good quality of productive assets, efficiency in management, liquidity, independence, and positive growth," said Andi Harun.

In his opinion, cooperatives are not just business entities, but also educational tools for economics and democracy that strengthen members' capacity in decision-making and financial independence.

Faced with the demands of the 4.0 industrial era and digital globalization, Andi Harun emphasized the importance of cooperatives to transform quickly.

"Cooperatives are required to be more adaptive, adopt technology, and expand their networks. For this, we are ready to facilitate training, guidance, and collaboration to accelerate the digitalization of cooperatives and local SMEs," he emphasized.

Furthermore, he revealed that today, Monday (21/7/2025, President Prabowo Subianto will officially launch the establishment of the Merah Putih Village Cooperative at the national level as part of the community-based economic revitalization program.

"There are about 103 cooperative mockups throughout Indonesia, and one of them is located in Lempake Village, Samarinda City," he explained.

This cooperative, he added, has been equipped with various mandatory business fields such as:

1. General store,
2. BNI 46 Savings and Loan Business
3. Clinic,
4. Pharmacy,
5. Cold storage / cold chain,
6. LPG Logistics, and
7. Post office logistics

In its development, this cooperative will also expand into the agriculture and food security sector by adding rice milling and drying units, subsidy and non-subsidy fertilizer outlets, organic fertilizers, animal feed, livestock sales outlets, as well as digitalization systems for production and marketing.

Andi Harun hopes that cooperatives in Samarinda can become the main catalyst in building local economic independence.

"Cooperatives must become the cornerstone of the people's economy, not only surviving but also growing and bringing prosperity," he concluded. (*)