The Malaysian Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC), the Government agency mandated to lead the nation’s digital economy forward, welcomes PENJANA (The Short -Term Economic Recovery Plan)’ strong emphasis on accelerating the growth of the digital economy through carefully targeted measures.
The digital economy has been playing an increasingly significant role during this pandemic and the tough times have called for ‘swift action’ to adopt the announced measures. Boosting the Digital Adoption The allocations within PENJANA that will spur the digital economy will increase confidence to leap from the Restart phase marked by the Conditional Movement Control Order (CMCO), through the Recovery phase or Recovery Movement Control Order (RMCO).
RM 700 million was allocated for the digitalisation of SMEs and MSME. The Government is also assisting by incentivising SMEs and mid-tier companies to digitalise their operations and trade channels while continuing to provide grants and loans under the RM100 million SME Digitalisation Matching Grant, RM500 million SME Technology Transformation Fund (application to open next month) and RM100 million Smart Automation Grant initiatives.
MDEC will be working with relevant agencies to identify ways to track and measure in making sure over 907,065 SMEs in Malaysia benefit from these incentives. As of to date, MDEC’s SME digitalisation initiatives have onboarded a total of 230 Technology Solution Providers (TSP) with 595 digital and technology solutions to support over 200 SMEs. M
MDEC has engaged more than 100,000 SMEs nationwide with the support of 12 industry partners. MDEC will also be collaborating with MyCreative Ventures and the rest of the industry partners to plan for a post Covid-19 recovery programme and to spur the growth of the creative content industry, especially through programmes and soft loans. The loans will support arts, culture, entertainment, creative and events with an allocation of RM225 million as the majority of the sector’s activities were forced to stop to operate ever since March 18.
To spur the Digital Creative Content industry, MDEC has been allocated with RM35 million and this will be announced soon once the details have been finalised. RM25 million of the allocation will go to the Global Online Workforce (GLOW) programme with the aim of training Malaysians to earn an income as freelancers for jobs in the global digital economy.
The projected growth could be achieved through the active intervention of various ecosystem partners via ongoing initiatives and MDEC potentially see the expected contribution to GDP to go up to as high as RM170 billion for 2020.
Surina Shukri, CEO of MDEC said, “In the midst of the world pivoting to digital as a result of lockdowns, safe distancing and working from home, MDEC has continued its work to support the Rakyat, businesses and build investors’ confidence by making sure the nation embraces digital adoption and innovation
