Mulyagusdin

In February 2017, I signed a proposal document to Bappeda Aceh Province, in partnership with the UKM Center at USK's Faculty of Economics and Business, to build a system called SIMPATI UMKM ACEH: a database of MSME (micro, small, and medium enterprise) operators across Aceh, down to the subdistrict and gampong (village) level. Today, the state, through BPS (Statistics Indonesia), is carrying out a complete, large-scale version of that same idea. It's called the 2026 Economic Census.

I'm telling this story not to claim credit. I'm telling it because I know exactly how expensive and difficult it is to properly record MSME data, and because of that, I also know exactly why the census now underway is too important to shrug off.

A Giant Treated Like a Dwarf

MSMEs are the largest business group in Indonesia, yet they get the least attention from all of us. The latest data puts their contribution to national GDP at over 61 percent, absorbing nearly 97 percent of the workforce across roughly 65 million business units nationwide.¹ Compare that with the share of public discussion they actually get: MSMEs only become a hot topic in the run-up to elections, wrapped in the jargon of “people's economy,” then go quiet again as soon as campaign season ends. This irony isn't a coincidence. Because most MSME operators are ordinary people, this important channel is too often reduced to a political tool rather than the subject of serious, measurable, sustained policy attention.

In Aceh, the same pattern plays out on a smaller scale, and the following three numbers illustrate it plainly. Eight years ago, when I was still involved in drafting the Aceh Department of Cooperatives and MSMEs' 2017-2022 Strategic Plan, the official figure we worked with was 85,534 registered and supported MSMEs, with 9,062 cooperatives (5,437 still active).² A year later, in an evaluation of the Aceh Kaya Program that I presented to the Department of Cooperatives and MSMEs (November 2018), we calculated a projected 2022 target of 224,004 MSME units, not the result of a new survey, but a program target calculated from the assumption of a 40 percent net-worth threshold and a 25 percent workforce threshold under Law 20/2008.³ Now, from BPS's pre-census database, already cited by the Aceh Secretariat's Assistant for Economic Affairs since October 2025, the figure stands at 624,500 business units. This number isn't the direct result of the 2026 Economic Census, which only began in May 2026 and is around 50 percent complete as of mid-July (targeted for completion by the end of August), but rather the database already recorded before the census even started.⁴

(Figure 1: these three numbers are not methodologically equivalent, so this isn't evidence that MSMEs grew sevenfold in nine years, but evidence of three different ways we've been “counting” MSMEs all along, and how far those old methods are from a full census.)

Every time the data-collection method improves, the number of businesses “discovered” jumps, not because MSMEs suddenly sprang into existence, but because they were simply never properly counted before. That's the problem SIMPATI UMKM ACEH tried to solve nine years ago, at the provincial scale, with a nine-month completion target.⁵ A project of that size, carried out by local consultants with limited resources, could never realistically reach the whole of Aceh down to the village level. The 2026 Economic Census has the power of the state behind it to do what, eight years ago, we could only propose on paper.

Setting Aside a Reasonable, but Mistaken, Suspicion

Every time the state collects business data on a massive scale, one suspicion always surfaces first: is this a shortcut to new taxes? That's a reasonable question, especially for micro business owners who've been comfortably operating without a Tax ID (NPWP) all along. But in fact, Law Number 16 of 1997 on Statistics explicitly prohibits data collected by BPS from being used for anything outside of statistics, including tax audits and criminal legal proceedings. BPS also isn't on the list of ILAP (Institutions, Agencies, Associations, and Other Parties) required to report to the Directorate General of Taxes. Census results are only published as national, sectoral, and regional aggregate tables, with no identities or unit-level details made public.⁶ The head of BPS Aceh himself stressed this directly to business owners during a field outreach session in mid-July.⁴

The second suspicion that often comes up: what's the point of being counted if nothing follows from it? That's a more grounded criticism, and it's exactly why this census data needs to be watched closely, not rejected. A census with no follow-up program is indeed pointless. But a program with no census is far more pointless, because it means we're drafting policy and the Aceh regional budget (APBA) for 624,500 businesses we've never actually gotten to know one by one.

After Being Counted, Then What? The Same Three Knots, Then and Now

This is where the real problem begins. Good data is only the first step. In the Aceh Department of Cooperatives and MSMEs' 2017-2022 Strategic Plan, our FGD (focus group discussion) results mapped the problems facing cooperatives and MSMEs into four categories: regulation, human resources, capital, and coaching/technology, each with an external side (from outside the cooperative/MSME organization) and an internal side (from within the organization itself).⁷ Nine years later, the three core knots haven't changed: capital, human resources, and innovation, exactly the three things MSME operators complain about most once they're finally “discovered” by an assistance program.

On the question of capital, field research I carried out myself for my master's thesis in Leipzig, Germany (2011), on sharia financing for MSMEs in Banda Aceh, taught me one lesson that corrects a common assumption: the sharia label on a financing product turns out not to be the main determinant of MSME performance. Out of 78 correlation tests, only 16 were significant, and the most influential factors were actually technical variables like the speed of the disbursement process and the push for market expansion, not the sharia aspect alone.⁸ In other words, the financing scheme MSMEs need isn't simply about sharia versus conventional, it's about precise design: fast, matched to the real scale of the business, and addressing gaps identified long ago: the scale gap (the loans banks offer don't match micro-business needs), formalization gap (the legal and collateral requirements MSMEs don't have), and the information gap (MSMEs don't understand bank procedures, and banks don't understand the real conditions MSMEs face).⁹

Once by-name, by-address data is available from the 2026 Economic Census, these three knots can be addressed with precision at the district/city level, no longer as one-size-fits-all programs applied uniformly across Aceh:

• Capital → financing schemes designed around business clusters, CSR coordinated through a single channel (rather than scattered without direction), and credit guarantee schemes to bridge the formalization gap → the outcome: MSMEs move up a tier and Aceh's Own-Source Revenue (PAA) grows, reducing dependence on central transfer funds, which currently still account for 76 percent of the APBA (regional budget).⁴
• Human resources → targeted, certified training matched to the real needs of each business cluster, paired with ongoing mentorship, rather than the one-off training sessions that have been a recurring complaint in the Strategic Plan since 2017 → the outcome: productivity and the quality of financial reporting improve.
• Innovation & technology → digital adoption, quality certification, partnerships with offtakers, and a push for market/export expansion → the outcome: competitiveness rises from a national MSME export-contribution base that's currently still low, around 15.7 percent of Indonesia's total exports.¹

Moving 2,100 Businesses Up, One Step at a Time

Building on that database, the Aceh government has set a concrete target in the 2025-2029 RPJMA (Regional Medium-Term Development Plan): the proportion of small-and-medium enterprises (excluding micro) rising from 0.34 percent to 0.5 percent by 2025, and doubling to 0.68 percent by 2029.⁴ That figure looks small on paper, but against a base of 624,500 business units, it means roughly 2,100 additional business units that genuinely need to move up from micro to small-and-medium over the next three years.

A target that size won't be reached through one-size-fits-all programs. It's only realistic if we know exactly who those 2,100 businesses are, which subdistrict they're in, what sector they operate in, and what specific obstacles are holding them back, exactly the question SIMPATI UMKM ACEH set out to answer eight years ago, and the one census officers are answering today as they knock on the doors of our shops and businesses, one by one.

So if a 2026 Economic Census officer comes to your business in the coming weeks, answer with accurate data. Not merely out of obligation or compulsion, but because after eight years of waiting, this is the map we finally have. And remember: a wrong map leads policy in the wrong direction too.

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Sumber dan rujukan:

1. Money.kompas.com, dikutip ulang oleh Koran Manado (4 Mei 2026), “UMKM Sumbang 61 Persen PDB Nasional di Tengah Disrupsi Ekonomi”, mengutip data Kementerian Koperasi dan UKM RI.
2. Rencana Strategis Dinas Koperasi dan UKM Aceh 2017–2022 (dokumen kerja penyusunan, Ali Mulyagusdin sebagai staf ahli), data kondisi eksisting tahun 2017.
3. Presentasi internal, “Evaluasi Pelaksanaan Program Dinas Koperasi dan UKM se-Provinsi Aceh Tahun 2018” (proyeksi target Program Aceh Kaya 2017–2022), disampaikan di Banda Aceh, 15 November 2018.
4. Waspada Aceh: “BPS Aceh: Sensus Ekonomi 2026 Jadi Momentum Perbaikan Arah Ekonomi Daerah” (28 Oktober 2025) dan “BPS Aceh: Pendataan Sensus Ekonomi Hampir 50 Persen, Sektor Konstruksi Masih Jadi Tantangan” (12 Juli 2026).
5. Kerangka Acuan Kerja “SIMPATI UMKM ACEH: Sistem Informasi Manajemen Pelaporan dan Statistik Usaha Mikro, Kecil, dan Menengah Provinsi Aceh,” CV. Membangun Aceh dengan Pengetahuan bekerja sama dengan UKM Center FEB Unsyiah diajukan ke BAPPEDA Provinsi Aceh, 16 Februari 2017.
6. DDTC News, “BPS Tegaskan Data Sensus Ekonomi 2026 Tak Dipakai untuk Pajak”; Money.kompas.com (29 Juni 2026), “BPS Jamin Kerahasiaan Data Sensus Ekonomi 2026, Bukan untuk Kepentingan Pajak”, berbasis Undang-Undang Nomor 16 Tahun 1997 tentang Statistik.
7. Rencana Strategis Dinas Koperasi dan UKM Aceh 2017–2022, Tabel 10 “Permasalahan Dihadapi Koperasi dan UKM,” hasil Focus Group Discussion Dinas Koperasi dan UKM Aceh.
8. Mulyagusdin, A. (2011). The Role of Sharia Finance for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises Development in Aceh Province, Indonesia (Master’s Thesis, International SEPT Program, University of Leipzig, Germany, dibimbing Dr. Ute Rietdorf).
9. Kerangka Acuan Kerja “SIMPATI UMKM ACEH” (2017), bagian Latar Belakang, mengutip kerangka scale gap, formalization gap, and information gap dalam literatur pembiayaan UMKM.