Prospects and Challenges Of The Creative Economy Facing "Asean Economic Community"

Abstract

Trade liberalization in Southeast Asian countries that are part of Asean Economic Community (Asean Economic Community / AEC) cooperation will be effective on December 31, 2015. Local players seem to be forced to compete with the big players from abroad in the domestic market without any further protection from the government. Of course this should be anticipated gradually and sustainably. The purpose of this study is identifying strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and challenges of SMEs in 14 creative industry sectors in Surakarta. Primary data was collected by interviewing the actors creative economy and secondary data collected through the study of literature which was confirmed through interviews with actors of creative economy in that city. The strengths factors of creative economy in that city includes having special characteristics that are not shared by other regions, such as traditional dances, batik, culinary and various annual art shows as well as a variety of historic buildings and places. While the weakness of creative economy in that city are unable to do a marketing and promotion broadly, still using manual tools, manufacturing process takes a long time, less skilled employees, lack of capital to be able to meet the export demand and good raw materials are difficult to find and the price is getting expensive, standard of quality, some are still rather difficult licensing, management and accounting are still very simple. Prospects creative industries both domestically and abroad are enormous. Market share promise to creative industries is still open very wide, and will have a tendency to increase. Challenges Creative Economy in Surakarta, including at the international level of position bargaining of Indonesia for labour issues still need to be improved, high product standardization, as well as competition with foreign players.