The First Conference on Muslim World Economy and Call for Papers Digitalizing Muslim World Empowerment and Prosperity

• Pandemic Impact on MSMEs 

The Covid-19 pandemic has affected a major blow to Micro, Small, Medium Enterprises (MSMEs). The Indonesian International Labor Organization (ILO) survey, for example, found that two-thirds of MSMEs surveyed had stopped their operations, 52% of MSMEs lost more than half of their income, and 63% of MSMEs cut the number of workers (Ministry of Finance, 2021). Meanwhile, a survey conducted by Bank Indonesia noted that as many as 87.5% of MSMEs were negatively affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, especially in terms of declining sales so it affected MSMEs’ income, profits, and liquidity (Bisnis Indonesia, 2021). The results of this survey are not much different from the Katadata Insight Center (KIC) survey regarding the impact of Covid-19 on MSMEs in Greater Jakarta. KIC found that Covid-19 had a negative effect on 82.9% of MSMEs, of which most (63.9%) experienced a decline in turnover of more than 30% (KIC, 2020).

• Decade of Digitalization 

Pandemic has distorted many economic activities. Governments’ policies to lockdown or social restriction create an immediate effect on transportation, the flow of materials and commodities, as well as minimizing human interaction. As a result, the economy is vastly shifting to virtual rather than physical actions.  The role of the internet and social media dominantly occupy and change the way economic actors do business. Digitalization in sense of maximizing business by employing internet use, widening the market by online selling, managing finances and budget through applications, has positively impacted to the MSMEs’ performance (Bellakhal & Moelhi, 2020). Digitalization also enlarges MSMEs in doing innovations and cut off inefficiency (Raimo et al., 2021). In the end, MSMEs produce competitive advantages as they activate digital transformation in all of their business networks (Fitriasari, 2020). Digitalization is no wonder will shape a country toward prosperity. From around 150 countries that have been studied, an increase in digitization of 10 percentage points triggered a 0.50 to 0.62 percent gain in per capita GDP. The more advanced the country, the greater the impact of digitization appears to be. An estimation of the total global economic impact of digitization, in terms of added GDP, was US$395 billion per year (El-Darwiche et al., 2012).

The Conference program will be conducted online on 14-15 July 2022. Prominent speakers will be invited as can be seen in the Table: