For the upcoming Budget 2025, SME Association Malaysia is hoping there will be continuous support and assistance from the government that could assist the industry’s recovery process.
Association president Chin Chee Seong told Business Today that despite the recent positivity in the GDP performance in the last two quarters, many small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are still struggling and having problems which hinder their recovery process to pre-Covid-19 level.
“As such, we hope the government could avoid having any unexpected increment in the costs of doing businesses or taxes for the SMEs in the upcoming budget, otherwise, it will further delay the recovery process,” Chin said while suggesting that the government should first consider introducing ways or measures to assist the industry.
Among those supports are the provision and introduction of another grant with higher value to the SMEs.
He highlighted that the current value of the digitalisation and automation grants provided, which ranges from RM5,000 to RM10,000, is insufficient to assist the SMEs in their digitalisation and automation process.
“I hope the government can consider increasing the value of the digitalisation grant up to RM200,000 per company to ease the SMEs off their financial burden in embarking on the digitalisation and automation process.
“At the same time, the government should also consider increasing the allocation for a market development grant to RM300,000 per company as it will ensure the SMEs can have sufficient funds to cover all export promotion-related expenses,” Chin said to Business Today.
He added that the recent removal of government subsidies for raw materials has caused a lot of issues for the SMEs industry.
“We hope that such a scenario will not happen in the upcoming budget, otherwise, there will be a big fall and more setbacks to the SMEs’ upcoming earnings and performance,” he explained.
In terms of SMEs’ preparedness for environmental, social and government (ESG) adoption, Chin urged the government to consider conducting fundamental ESG classes or workshops for SMEs.
“These classes or workshops is crucial to those SMEs that are within export-oriented business lines.
“Meanwhile, the classes or workshop will allow more SMEs to embrace and adopt ESG in their business nature while reducing the costs of doing business,” he said while calling for the government to initiate more collaboration efforts between SMEs and government departments or agencies in developing necessary ESG guidelines and processes.
