Minister of Food and Industries (MAFI) Ronald Kiandee has launched the Agro-Youth Entrepreneur Scheme (Agro-YES) specifically for youth entrepreneurs to pursue opportunities in agriculture, marketing, and agro-tourism.
Speaking at the launch, Kiandee highlighted that the objective of the programme is to attract young people aged between 18 to 40 years old to get into agro-businesses.
“With this trend of youths going into agriculture, MAFI is taking proactive steps to rebrand the Young Agropreneur Programme to Agro-YES. The rebranding efforts is looking to reduce the chain of bureaucracy and time taken to apply for the scheme,” he said.
The former Young Agropreneur Programme also provided a loan programme to assist youths involved in farming and agro-based industries but with a lower amount of RM50,000. However, the Agro-YES scheme has increased the amount to RM500,000.
MAFI has reaffirmed their commitment to revitalise and to rejuvenate the agriculture industry with new approaches with the youth on the front, applying modern technology [Internet of Things (IOT), and IR4.0], and strengthening research and development in the agriculture sector.
Kiandee concluded that the agrofood industry contributed 51.6 percent to the agriculture sector in 2020 with a positive growth of 2.3 percent compared to other economic sectors which faced negative growth during the Covid-19 outbreak.
