Celuk recorded the date of 2 September 1999 as a highly significant day as some of the village’s leading craftsmen gathered in a meeting to create ‘KPPC’ Handicraft Cooperative Association of Celuk. This was designed to keep Celuk’s image and handicraft business successful.
The meeting initiators were, amongst others, Kadek Ardiana, SE (economist), and I Made Mustika. They aimed to solve a variety of problems related to raw material supply, capitalization, and marketing. The KPPC Chairman, Drs. I Made Gede Sutama spoke to ‘Bali Travel News’ recently. Sutama, who is the owner of ‘Dede’ Art Shop, speaking in detail, stressed the need to approach an enterprise capable of supplying raw silver material at a reasonable price due to a lack of financial capital of the cooperative members.
The reasoning in defining the goal of the cooperative has been a response to the third generation of Celuk’s community losing interest in the silver trade. It is very important to overcome this stumbling block, otherwise Celuk will lose its image as the number one silver producer on this island. Such a consequence would be a pity due to the widespread fame of Celuk throughout Bali, and Indonesia. craftsmen’s business is ‘PPn’ of 10 % charged upon raw material. “I support the craftsmen in abolishing the handicap,” Sutama, the dean of the Faculty of Economics Hindu University, wrote in a letter directly addressed to the Indonesian President and Vice President.
The dean demanded that both chief state administrators lift the ‘PPN’ tax, charged upon raw materials. This would facilitate the acquirement of raw materials and would overcome speculative action by Jakarta’s suppliers. The lifting of this tax has become vital to the craftsmen since they broke a contract with ‘Aneka Tambang’ a state mining industry posted in Jakarta, bringing about more difficulties to the Celuk silver community.
