Hong Kong, 9 April 2022 -- Once rowing two three islands crossed. This is an old saying that encourages us to do things right so that the result of the work is not one to one, but one to two, or even one to three at a time. This expression is also quite apt to describe a record of achievements of PT Bank Negara Indonesia (Persero), Tbk. or BNI in Hong Kong. BNI has succeeded in helping the success of the Indonesian diaspora in Hong Kong, whose business is looking for local MSME products from the country to be exported to the Pearl of the East.
As a government development agency with a global Bank mandate, BNI continues to promote the Xpora program, namely exports and diaspora with the hope of responding to all Banking service needs for all Indonesian international businesses.
Alex Chu is of Indonesian descent who has lived in Hong Kong for a long time. He is the second generation of an Indonesian diaspora couple, and has founded three family companies namely Surya Trading Company Ltd. (Surya Trading), Forever Harvest Corporation Limited (Forever Harvest) and Fast Access Corp Ltd. (Fast Access).
These three businesses are recorded as conducting expansive and competitive business operations in Hong Kong. In fact, Surya Trading is currently listed as having 10 stores under the name Surya Market selling food, beverage products with brands and products made in Indonesia.
Meanwhile, Forever Harvest is a wholesale supplier of 80 (eighty) partner stores in Hong Kong, besides Fast Access is a money transfer agent to Indonesia.
The goods imported by Surya Trading are daily necessities including food and beverage produced by Indonesian MSMEs. Through self-owned stores and affiliated stores, Surya Trading has a target market of more than 170,000 PMI in Hong Kong.
Surya Trading also distributes these products from Indonesia around Hong Kong and targets the Chinese population according to the quality of the goods they want.
In running his business, Alex also directly helps Indonesian MSMEs to enter the Hong Kong market, where this is one of his services as an Indonesian descendant who lives in Hong Kong.
BNI Hong Kong is here to provide financing to continue to support Surya Trading's growth and development. Through BNI Xpora, Surya Trading was also involved in the business matching program to be able to add variants of Indonesian MSME products to penetrate the Hong Kong market and surrounding countries. Several products from MSMEs assisted by BNI Xpora have been exported to Hong Kong, including coffee, sweet potato chips, crackers and cuanki meatballs.
"We are very grateful for all the support that BNI has given us. Of course we hope that our relationship with BNI will continue to be maintained. We will continue to explore related Indonesian products if they can be accepted in the Hong Kong market," he said.
Apart from Surya Trading, Alex also has a business engaged in money transfer services, namely through a Fast Access company. As a money transfer agent, Fast Access has 88 sub-agents that assist PMI in making money transfers, considering that PMIs are more comfortable to be assisted through Indonesian networks as well.
Thanks to its family-friendly business style, Fast Access has also succeeded in collaborating with around 30,000 PMI as its customers, where the average volume of remittances per month reaches 70 million Hong Kong dollars or equivalent to Rp130 billion.
Currently, Fast Access has also become BNI's partner in sending money from Hong Kong to Indonesia through a secure and real-time API system.
Inspirational Story from BNI
BNI’s Treasury and International, Director Henry Panjaitan conveyed the business story of Alex's family being one of the thousands of diaspora assisted by BNI. BNI has succeeded in connecting the diaspora with MSMEs in Indonesia through diaspora loans.
Through this partnership, BNI is also able to ensure that local products enter supermarkets in Hong Kong with a target market of Indonesians as well as local residents.
"We hope that this will be an inspirational story for many diaspora as well as MSME players in Indonesia to continue responding to great business opportunities overseas," he said.
Henry explained that Hong Kong provides various conveniences and legal certainty in business. In terms of legal certainty, Hong Kong has very clear laws to protect entrepreneurs. In terms of ease of doing business, the Hong Kong government also provides various tax-free policies for the export and import of goods from and out of Hong Kong.
This policy is what makes many people create companies in Hong Kong to import goods and then export them to other countries.
He said that BNI was also proactive in inviting large companies, especially those from Indonesia, to then open businesses in Hong Kong and be more active in seeking export opportunities for Indonesian-made products.
"One of the businesses we do at BNI Hong Kong is to invite big companies, especially from Indonesia, to then open businesses in Hong Kong, and then we finance the exports and imports, where the parent company is financed by BNI in Indonesia, then in Hong Kong we finance the trading arm companies. This is basically the main business at BNI Hongkong, "he said.