Mulyagusdin

While carrying out my mandate at a BUMD, I was asked directly by the then-Governor of Aceh to help Aceh's MSMEs. The direction was simple but not easy: study the problem and try to find room for intervention so there'd be a real solution, not just more talk. I asked my team to gather data and study the issue from the ground up, rather than guessing from assumptions.

The result: the main problem turned out not to be production at all. The problem was in marketing: access to national and international markets. Aceh's products, it has to be honestly admitted, haven't gone global in any real numbers. The one exception is perhaps Gayo coffee. Even that is still often held back by price, supply, and the reality that most of its exports still have to go through Belawan Port in Medan, not directly from Aceh, because Aceh's own export port infrastructure isn't fully ready.¹ And even when an Aceh product does make it onto the world stage, it's often recognized and carried out under another province's name, not Aceh's.

From there, the Business Development team I'd asked to see this through laid out an idea I'd been thinking about for a long time: what is the ideal role of a Regional Government-Owned Enterprise (BUMD) in developing Aceh's MSME products? The question looks simple, but the answer determines whether thousands of small business operators across Aceh's 23 districts/cities keep selling raw, unbranded products, or move up to become players with real bargaining power.

RAMPAGOE: Weaving Together What Has Always Run on Its Own

Out of that discussion came the idea of building a sales platform for Aceh products, driven and facilitated by BUMDs, both at the provincial and district/city level, with the scope differentiated according to each one's capacity. We directed provincial-level Aceh BUMDs to focus on managing and trading large-scale natural resources like oil, gas, and minerals, while we pushed district/city BUMDs to handle resources closer to the community: fisheries, plantations, agriculture, and finished, semi-finished, processed, and handicraft products.

We named this program RAMPAGOE, short for Rangkai dan Angkat UMKM Aceh untuk Pembangunan Nanggroe (Weave and Lift Aceh's MSMEs for the Development of the Homeland). The name was chosen deliberately to underline its core idea: weaving together potential that has always run on its own across 23 districts/cities, then lifting it up together, not one by one.

Mapped out, MSME potential in each district/city isn't actually an emptiness, but an abundance that hasn't been connected yet. Aceh Besar has embroidery and cattle farming. Pidie has fish farming and seafood. Aceh Tengah has world-class Gayo arabica coffee. Aceh Timur has chili peppers and other agricultural produce. Sabang has dodol (sweet confection), clove handicrafts, and tourism potential. Gayo Lues has citronella essential oil with export potential. Aceh Jaya has patchouli, an ingredient in world-brand perfumes. The problem isn't that this potential doesn't exist; a Gayo coffee farmer isn't automatically connected to an export outlet, an Aceh Besar embroidery craftsperson doesn't automatically have access to the digital market, a fisherman on the west coast doesn't automatically have a route into the fish export marketplace. This is exactly where BUMDs, through RAMPAGOE, should step in, not as a competitor to MSMEs but as a bridge.

The Five Pillars We Designed

The RAMPAGOE program rests on five pillars: pushing Aceh's MSMEs to become independent and competitive, product innovation development, provision of sharia financing, management training, and opening up national and global market access. These five pillars are deliberately designed in sequence, there's no point opening market access if the product isn't ready in terms of quality, and no point training management if there's no financing that reaches small business operators.

The concrete collaboration differs from one region to another, tailored to local potential. In Bireuen, BUMD collaboration takes the form of MSME kiosks and a packaging center for chips and culinary products. In Aceh Barat, a latex processing plant and palm oil packaging. In Pidie Jaya, cacao fermentation and a local chocolate brand. In Banda Aceh, integrated tourism area development, a digital marketplace, and local culinary franchising. The pattern is the same: BUMDs come in not to take over, but to provide infrastructure that no single MSME could build on its own; cold storage, production houses, certification, distribution channels, and shared branding with the Aceh name clearly attached to the product.

Why Digital Marketing Isn't an Option, But a Necessity

One thing I emphasized from the very start of designing RAMPAGOE: opening market access through digital marketing strategy and management guidance is no longer an add-on option, but the main channel. The reasoning is data-driven: national e-commerce transaction value in 2024 was recorded at around Rp487 trillion, up about 7.3 percent from the previous year, and the long-term trend keeps rising alongside MSME digitalization and deepening internet penetration outside Java.² That means market access becomes far broader, costs lower with higher effectiveness, and this aligns with a shift in public behavior, where trust in online shopping keeps growing year after year.

For MSME operators in districts far from the city center, digital marketing is often the only way for them to reach buyers outside Aceh without having to have a physical shop in a big city. A mat-weaving craftsperson in Aceh Utara, for instance, has just as good a chance of being seen by a buyer in Jakarta as a business operator in Banda Aceh, provided there's the right platform, training, and mentorship. That's what RAMPAGOE tries to provide.

The Lesson I Brought Home

From the experience of designing and shepherding this program, I believe BUMDs have a responsibility that's often forgotten: being the connector between scattered local potential and a market far bigger than the business operators themselves ever imagined. Aceh's MSMEs don't need charity or one-off assistance. They need consistent infrastructure: financing that actually reaches them, ongoing training, and market access that doesn't stop the moment the program ends or the official who started it moves on.

If these five RAMPAGOE pillars keep being carried out consistently across all 23 districts/cities, not just designed once in 2023 and then left alone, I believe Aceh's MSMEs can move from being merely “potential that keeps getting mentioned” into an economic force whose impact is genuinely felt. Not just on the Aceh government's presentation slides, but in the household income of the business operators themselves.

Data sources:
1. Liputan lapangan mengenai ekspor kopi Gayo melalui Pelabuhan Belawan dan harapan ekspor langsung dari Pelabuhan Krueng Geukuh, Aceh Utara (IDN Times Sumut; Waspada Aceh).
2. Bank Indonesia, data nilai transaksi e-commerce nasional 2024 (dikutip Databoks/Kontan).