Noh has to provide clear policies and guidelines to SMEs in preparing for a post-pandemic economy, said the head of a local SME association.
Noh was named to the post by Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob earlier today, marking a return to the position the Tanjung Karang MP held for a year (2008-2009) when Abdullah Ahmad Badawi was prime minister.
Noh then took over the agriculture and food industries portfolio under the Najib Razak administration until the 2013 general election.
Speaking to FMT, Small and Medium Enterprises Association (Samenta) chairman William Ng said the incoming minister’s focus should be on ensuring a safe reopening of the economy so that the country’s SMEs “have a chance to survive”, and mapping out the post-pandemic direction for the entrepreneur community.
“The market has changed quite significantly since the onset of the pandemic, and the skill sets and tools needed to succeed in business have also changed,” noted Ng.
“The priority of the ministry, therefore, should be to provide clear policies and guidance to our SMEs in preparing for a post-pandemic economy.
“Chief among these include addressing the severe liquidity and talent crunch. We have focused, and rightly so, on helping SMEs digitalise. But without the right funding and talents in place, we will continue to see an uneven distribution of digitalisation among SMEs, and between larger firms and SMEs.”
The backbone of the economy, the country’s 1.1 million SMEs represent around 97% of all businesses in the country and contributed roughly 38% to Malaysia’s total gross domestic product last year.
However, it has been severely hit by the pandemic’s various lockdown measures and restrictions on non-essential businesses, with around 100,000 companies having ceased operations since the first movement control order, according to the Small and Medium Enterprises Association of Malaysia.
Just last month, the entrepreneur development and cooperatives ministry predicted that 49% of micro SMEs could collapse in October if lockdowns were to be prolonged, this after a survey of around 580,000 businesses.
Calling it the “hard truth”, then-minister Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar said more than seven million Malaysians would become unemployed should those businesses close.
The ministry also said the SME sector suffered RM40.7 billion in losses last year due to the various lockdown measures.
In a separate interview with FMT, Small and Medium Enterprises Association of Malaysia president Michael Kang called on Noh to focus on speeding up SME recovery and help formulate policies that would generate liquidity in the market.
“SMEs are suffering badly… A lot of families now have no food because people have lost their jobs, so the government needs to come up with immediate assistance,” he said.
“They can do so within a week, and then I think it will definitely help if the minister ‘turun padang’ (goes on the ground) to visit SMEs and find out their problems and how to solve them.”