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The Vice Rector of Student and Alumni Affairs Universitas Sebelas Maret (UNS), Prof. Kuncoro Diharjo appreciate the Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB) UNS, who establish a community for student entrepreneurship. Onward, along with the development of UNS as a Higher Education Institution as Legal Entity (PTNBH), the university will encourage start-up program and alumni will be a great supporting force for the program. This statement was expressed on the official announcement of the FEB UNS Students Entrepreneurship Community, Thursday, September 19^th, 2019.

“We want to bring you, students with entrepreneurial spirit, together with the successful alumni in order to establish a collaboration. We are confident that many start-ups from UNS will be established,” he explains.

To develop students’ entrepreneurship, UNS has provided a budget to support Students’ Creativity Program in Entrepreneurship (PKMK). Prof. Kuncoro also encourage the students who currently manage a business to develop theirs through creative thinking. “Think about something different or think differently, there should be a modification, and that’s what we called creativity,” he added.

The activity initiated by the Associate Dean of Student and Alumni Affairs of the FEB UNS, Dr. Mugi Harsono, invites around 70 students from diploma and bachelor program who currently have a business in service, culinary, and fashion. Different than the usual events, the official announcement was conducted during the evening time with a relaxed nuance. Aside from the Deanery of FEB UNS who attended the event, there are two successful alumni of FEB UNS who also attend the event they are Sih Wiryadi and Teguh Imam Santoso. The alumni tell their success story and also provide a special opportunity at the end of the event for the students to consult on their business.

Meanwhile, L. Setyo Budi, S.IP, the Head of Alumni and Students Affairs Sub-Division of the FEB UNS, express that the faculty hope that alumni can support the academic activities in the faculty through motivation and training. Other than that, alumni can also give donation for students who are in needs.

Corruption has become a serious problem in Indonesia and categorized as an extraordinary crime. The public interest on corruption cases is huge and they demand that the handling of corruption cases can be conducted effectively. The handling of corruption cases that usually are more focussed on the magnitude of the case, brought a concern as corruption eradication program has not implemented on the root cause of the corruption. This point of view was delivered by Prof. Dr. R Widyo Pramono, during a Book Review Seminar entitled “Melawan Korupsi Tanpa Gaduh (Fighting Corruption without Hustle-Bustle): A Memoar and Perspective of a Proscecutor and Professor” on Thursday, September 26^th, 2019, in FEB UNS Main Hall (3^rd Building).

Further, he explain that without hustle-bustle mean that corruption eradication should be conducted through a law enforcement in accordance with the rule-of-game, mannerism, customs, and religious teachings, which leads us to have sensibility, trustworthy-ness, fairness, and honesty during the trial of a corruption case. “The corruption eradication without hustle-bustle is conducted through a specific approach such as the investigation of corruption case should consider the suspect or alleged perpetrator’s conscience, avoiding injustice and manipulation. The publication of the case should not made into the headlines,” explains Prof. Pramono the author of the books who also served as a prosecutor for 32 years.

Further, he explains that to be able to eradicate corruption without any urge to be popular, the law enforcement officers, either prosecutors, judges, police, or the Corruption Eradication Commission Apparatus, should convince the public about their integrity in corruption eradication. The law enforcement officer should gain public trust. Public support on corruption eradication should be earned through a proper enforcement, fair, transparent, accountable, and appropriate norms, even though it was not implemented using a popular step.

The handling of a corruption case should be conducted quickly and should no be prolonged. A prolonged case will be harder to handle. On his final presentation, Prof. Pramono mentions that a synergy among the law enforcement institution needs to be improved, both at individual and at institutional level. A MoU among the law enforcement institution is expected to promote a better synergy in the form of better coordination and respect among the institution that signed the MoU.

The seminar is attended by the Rector of Universitas Sebelas Maret (UNS) Prof. Jamal Wiwoho, as well as other speakers such as Alexander Marwata the Vice Chairman of the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), Dr. Bandi the Vice Rector of General and Financial Affairs, and Dr. Hari Purwadi an academician from FH UNS. The book reviewed in the seminar is the 9^th edition. The author’s hope that through the seminar there will be more constructive input, critics, and suggestions provided for the improvement of his future works.

The Local Government of Surakarta appreciate the participation of FEB UNS in empowering the competitiveness of the Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSME) in Surakarta. Various trainings are provided by the FEB UNS such as training on production, financial management, Human Resource (HR) development, and product marketing. A community service program in online marketing for MSME perfecting the series of trainings provided. This was expressed by Daryono, the Head of MSME Division from the Cooperation and MSME Service of Surakarta, in his opening remark at a community service program conducted by the Research Group of Monetary and Fiscal Study FEB UNS in Sambirejo and Banjarsari Subdistrict, Banjarsari, Surakarta. The event take place on Wednesday, September 11th, 2019.
At the same occasion, Lukman Hakim, Ph.D, who represent the Group Research mentions that it is the time for the MSMEs product to get a re-branding, thus strengthening our product positioning in the domestic and international market. “A strong product brand followed with a good positioning will be the main capital for MSMEs entrepreneurs amid competitive competition in digital era. Even more, online product branding and positioning become a significant ‘weapon’ to influence the MSMEs market. This is because using digital marketing, we can reach wider consumers, thus improving product sales,” he says.
The assistance in the form of Product Branding Training was attended by 25 MSMEs with various products such as organic waste product, food product, fish cultivation, and furniture. Through this occasion, Catur Sugiarto, Ph.D, a faculty members of the FEB UNS who is also a food entrepreneurs, is invited as the main speaker.

Bureau van Dijk (BvD) is a publisher of business information that specialized on private firms, combined with an established software to conduct financial analysis on a firm. BvD offers various products/databases that focused on firm’s finance, merger and acquisition (M&A), transfer pricing, compliance, firms’ risk, procurement and supplier, credit risk, academic research, and business development. The products offered are Osiris, Orbis, BankFokus, EIU DataServices, and Zephyr. This information is presented by Margaretha Cahaya, Assistant Director, Business Development, Bureau van Dijk (BvD), during the introduction on the Training of BankFocus Banking and Finance Database, hosted by the Center of Research and Community Service Program of the FEB UNS, on Thursday September 12th, 2019.
“In a research a valid and reliable data is important, BvD provides service to fulfil these needs, thus the data collection process will be easier and faster to do. The data provided by BvD is a raw data, which is different from the data provided in research article. Therefore, it is expected that by using a high quality data, the quantity and quality of research publication will increase, and enhancing the universities’ ranking,” she explains.
Meanwhile, Benny Kesuma, the Head of Credit Solutions APAC BvD, provides an explanation on the usage of BankFocus in front of the participants, who consist of FEB UNS Faculty member, PhD students, and representative from Indonesia universities partners in Erasmus+ Optbank, namely Institut Teknologi Bandung (ITB), Universitas Syiah Kuala, Universitas Islam Negeri (UIN) Syarif Hidayatullah, Universitas Tanjungpura, and Universitas Sriwijaya. He explains that BankFocus is initially builds to solve banking sectors problems, because the banking sectors are actually connected one another. For instance, in conducting a business transaction such as export and import, the transaction is conducted between banks in different countries, thus each bank needs to do an analysis on the other bank before deciding to accept the transaction.
BankFocus is among the first banking financial database that provide the data from around 45,00 banks around the world. This will facilitate the banks’ analyst and researchers (lecturer) in conducting a research in banking sector, thus they are no longer needs to compile the data directly from the annual report. “We provide three data formats in BankFocus to support different type of research, the first one is national format (country specific format) that can support very detail data. This type of data is suitable for research within a country. The second data format is global detail format, which provide the data and financial ratios that are universally accepted, thus suitable for cross-countries research. Lastly the global standard format provides the global (international) data that usually used in financial analysis,” he explained in detail.
Currently there are many big banks such as JP Morgan, and big national banks in Indonesia such as BNI and Mandiri that uses BankFocus in conducting analysis. Aside from the financial data, BankFocus also provides other data such as ownership structure. All of the data provided in BankFocus is gathered from three resources firms’ annual report, regulatory source, and Moody’s analytic.
At the end of the session, the participants are encouraged to do a trial in using the BankFocus database.

The Faculty of Economics Business, Universitas Sebelas Maret (FEB UNS) invites Dr. Chandra Chahyadi from Eastern Illinois University, USA in a discussion with the Faculty members and postgraduate students of FEB UNS, in Thursday, October 26^th, 2019. The Associate Dean of Academic Affairs of FEB UNS, Dr. Izza Mafruhah, welcomed the event and hopes that the discussion can encourage more researches in financial inclusion. “As we know, the competition for DIKTI grant is increasingly stringent by year. A research collaboration with Dr. Candra will provide a richer understanding for the related topic, as well as providing advices on research method, data, and analysis tools,” Dr. Izza mentions.

On the opening of his presentation, Dr. Chahyadi mentions that financial inclusion is an interesting topic and relevant for the government, as they have a great concern on poverty alleviation and one of the most effective measures is to introduce a formal financial system. Further he explains that there are many beneficial financial products for the community. However, the community often do not have access to get the products or services. Many assumed that poverty is caused because the society does not know or posses financial literacy. This assumption is not completely correct, as the society usually have a basic financial literacy, for instance they have intuition to save their money and/or preparing a financial planning through simple form such as arisan.

He also mentions that 31% of world population do not have bank account, approximately 1.7 billion people, while the rest currently have a bank account but is not an active user. “If we can help them to gain access to bank, they can do easier, faster, and safer transaction. Therefore, we should encourage them to have a bank account that insured by the Deposit Insurance Agency (LPS). By doing so, we could help SMEs to get better funding as well as reducing poverty.”

Finally, he added that the current conventional banking system is too rigid, which made it difficult for the community to access.