Halal Food Certification to Improve the Competitiveness of East and Middle Business in Indonesia

Indonesia is called feasible as a halal tourism center because the majority of its population is Muslim. The concept of halal tourism is an actualization of the Islamic concept where halal and haram values become the main benchmark, this means that all aspects of tourism activities are inseparable from halal certification which must be a reference for every tourism actor (Chookaew et al., 2015). In tourist attractions SMEs can sell products as a distinctive Indonesian feature, but if coupled with the concept of halal tourism, the products sold by SMEs must certainly have halal certification. With the existence of halal certification, of course, it will guarantee that the products sold are suitable for foreign tourists who are very concerned about halal food or products. In addition there are also Muslim tourists from non-Muslim countries such as Singapore and France. Kemenparekraf noted that the number of Muslim tourist visits to Indonesia reached 1,270,437 people per year (Tourism, 2015). According to Perdani & Chasanah (2018), the construction of a halal guarantee system is very important because it is to safeguard products whose raw materials are not from Muslim countries. With halal certification, SME products obtain added value so that they will increase the competitiveness of Indonesian products in the international world. The purpose of this study is to find out what factors influence and which factors play the most powerful role in influencing efforts to improve the competitiveness of Small and Medium Enterprises in Eastern Indonesia. The research design used in this study is a qualitative method (by using a qualitative approach to case studies and data mining with the method of depth interview). The data used in the second (qualitative) approach is one shot, which is collected through data mining in the form of depth interviews and focus group discussions to key informants. Informants as many as 12 SMEs and the Department of Industry and Trade as well as MUI in the local area in Eastern Indonesia (Bali and Lombok). In addition to completing the depth of the discussion and allowing more in-depth findings to be produced, literature studies have also been conducted on several similar research results. The results of this study found that there are several factors influencing efforts to improve the competitiveness of Eastern Indonesia Small and Medium Enterprises namely Availability & Conditions of Business Environment, Business Capability, Business Performance, Policy and Infrastructure, Research and Technology, and External Support. The dominant factor is that policy and infrastructure want to illustrate the extent to which the implementation of policies and infrastructure in locations around MSMEs operate can support or hinder businesses to operate. In this case, there are several measurement indicators, namely the application of legal policies, How to cite this article: Ririn Tri Ratnasari, Sri Gunawan, Sylva Alif Rusmita, and Ari Prasetyo, (2019), “Halal Food Certification to Improve the Competitiveness of East and Middle Business in Indonesia” in The 2nd International Conference on Islamic Economics, Business, and Philanthropy (ICIEBP) Theme: “Sustainability and Socio Economic Growth”, KnE Social Sciences, pages 1044–1056. DOI 10.18502/kss.v3i13.4266 Page 1044 Corresponding Author: Ririn Tri Ratnasari ririnsari@feb.unair.ac.id Received: 10 February 2019 Accepted: 14 March 2019 Published: 28 March 2019 Publishing services provided by Knowledge E Ririn Tri Ratnasari et al. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited. Selection and Peer-review under the responsibility of the ICIEBP Conference Committee. 2nd ICIEBP the application of economic policies, the application of socio-cultural policies, and the completeness and availability of business supporting infrastructure.