5 Jan 2009
Press Conference on ACCCIM 2009 SMEs Survey Report
A very Good Morning to all the friends from media. Thank you for attending this morning’s Press Conference on ACCCIM 2009 SMEs Survey Report.
The global economy has been affected by various negative factors since June 2008. The impact of the economic crisis is huge and has affected every country. The world economy has been successively hit by price hikes of primary and raw materials, the sub-prime financial turmoil in US and recently erupted A (H1N1) flu. The shrinking of market, increasing of operating cost as well as various adverse factors have posed stern challenges to the business community.
Various countries have launched stimulus packages with huge injection of funds to stimulate the economy. Malaysian Government has launched the 1st and 2nd Stimulus Packages in Nov 2008 and March this year with huge sum of 7 billion and 60 billion ringgit respectively, aiming to stimulate the domestic economy. Bank Negara Malaysia has also announced the reduction of Overnight Policy Rate (OPR) thrice from last November to February this year, in order to induce the banking sector to continue lending and revitalise the domestic business and consumer activities.
At the meantime, the Government also offered 3 assistance programmes, namely SME Assistance Guarantee Scheme, Working Capital Guarantee Scheme and Industry Loan Restructuring Guarantee Schemes to assist businesses able to obtain financing during this difficult period.
The scope of our survey is focusing on the problems facing by businesses during the economic slowdown period, and find out whether the businesses, particularly the SMEs have benefited from the various assistance programmes offered by the Government. Meanwhile, the ACCCIM also wish to create awareness of SMEs on the existing assistance programmes and thus to utilise it.
Ladies and Gentlemen:
As compared with the previous SMEs Survey, the period of conducting this survey is relatively short, i.e. only 1 month. However the response by the business community has been most encouraging. We sent out 2,000 sets of survey papers and the responded reached 1,231, or 61.55% of responding rate. According to the feedback from the survey, most of SMEs are hoping that the Government could reduce corporate tax and electricity tariff to ease their burden. ACCCIM herein wish the government could give due consideration accordingly.
ACCCIM welcome the recent government announcement to liberalise the foreigner ownership in financial services, by issuing new Commercial bank licenses for 3 world-class banks, as well as to establish two mega Islamic banks. We believe that this can lead to healthy competition between the financial institutions and thus provides better services to the business community.
While hoping the government to promote more business-friendly policy and offer more assistance, the SMEs should also improve themselves in various aspects. They should strengthen their competitiveness by reducing operative cost to gain better footing in the global market and improve the quality and value of their products or services.
The details of the survey will be briefed by Mr. Koong Lin Loong later. Finally, I wish to extend our appreciation to all for participants of this survey, as well as all those who assist to carry out the survey. The report of the survey will be presented to relevant government departments and agencies, and also upload to ACCCIM website for reference of the public.
Thank you.
(5th May 2009)
