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The Indonesian Economist Association (ISEI) and the Indonesia Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Kadin) have drafted a new scheme to improve the income of 1 mn farmers in various commodity industries by 2020. PISAgro, which stands for Partnership for Indonesia's Sustainable Agriculture, aims to reach more than 445,000 farmers in 2016. ISEI chairman Muliaman Hadad said farmers were currently experiencing stagnant productivity from inadequate access to finance, as well as good quality seeds and fertilizers. Kadin chairman Rosan Roeslani said the program would give support in plantation infrastructure, provision of seeds and fertilizers, mentoring and the strict implementation of good farming practices.

Indonesia seems to push ahead with its plans to create a new $8bn Islamic bank that would mainly arise from the merger of three large domestic Shariah-compliant lenders. According to the chairman of Indonesia’s Financial Services Authority, Muliaman Hadad, the merger between the Islamic finance units of government-controlled Bank Mandiri, Bank Rakyat Indonesia and Bank Negara Indonesia, as well as a small unit of Bank Tabungan Negara, could happen as early as this year. The idea behind the mega-merger is to create an Islamic banking institution that would be able to face the growing foreign competition, as well as to boost the currently quite small market share of Islamic finance in the country. The new Islamic mega-bank would also be a catalyst for new products for retail customers and businesses.

Indonesian authorities are pushing ahead with a plan to create an $8 billion Islamic megabank, even after a similar proposal fell through in Malaysia. A potential merger of the shariah-compliant units of government-controlled Bank Mandiri, Bank Rakyat Indonesia and Bank Negara Indonesia could happen as soon as this year, Financial Services Authority (OJK) chairman Muliaman Hadad said. Talks are ongoing with the State-Owned Enterprises Ministry, which first proposed the merger in May 2013. The megabank could help drive a quadrupling in Islamic banks’ market share to 20 percent by 2018, compared with 10 percent without it.

A plan to merge state-owned sharia banks into one large lender is one of the Financial Services Authority’s main projects this year, as part of a broader commitment to consolidate the Indonesian overall banking industry. Chairman Muliaman Hadad said he had held talks with the State-Owned Enterprises Ministry regarding the consolidation and that they were currently developing a “mechanism” to integrate the three lenders and one business unit. The current three state-run sharia banks are Bank Mandiri’s Syariah Mandiri, Bank Rakyat Indonesia’s BRISyariah and Bank Negara Indonesia’s BNI Syariah and a sharia business unit under Bank Tabungan Negara.