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43,200 receive financing worth RM451.36 million

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KUCHING: The National Entrepreneur Group Economic Fund (Tekun Nasional) has assisted a total of 43,206 entrepreneurs in various business sectors with financing worth RM451.36 million from March till Oct 18 this year.

Entrepreneur Development and Cooperatives (Medac) Minister Datuk Seri Dr Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar said the assistance was meant to help entrepreneurs affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.

“There are micro, informal entrepreneurs especially hawkers and small traders that are affected by the pandemic. Therefore, the ministry has provided various assistance to hawkers and small traders by implementing agencies under Medac such as Tekun Nasional, SME Corp, SME Bank and Bank Rakyat,” he said during the question-and-answer session in Parliament on Monday (Nov 2).

He said Tekun Nasional had received a total of RM300 million from the government through the Prihatin SME economic stimulus package and Penjana to provide easy financing to entrepreneurs under the Covid Business Recovery – Micro (CBRM) and Tekun Business Recovery Scheme programme.

“Another agency under Medac, SME Corp, also provides financing and development assistance to Bumiputera Entrepreneurs including the Tunas Usahawan Belia Bumiputera (TUBE) programme under the Penjana,” he said.

He said the assistance is in the form of training with a business start-up grant up to RM15,000 and business monitoring for a period of twelve months.

“As of September this year, a total of 765 participants had participated in this programme,” he said.

To another question, Wan Junaidi said micro, informal entrepreneurs and SMEs need to shift from conventional way of doing business to using technology.

“This means that they must be trained, guided and given facilities to carry out their business digitally. We have done a study that informal entrepreneurs that do not embrace e-commerce will be left behind or left out,” he said.

Wan Junaidi said that was why the government together with the ministry had provided all the mechanism and infrastructure to create digital entrepreneurs throughout the country.

“Financial allocations have been given not only from my ministry but also the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (Mosti). God willing, we will continue to carry out online businesses in this new norm,” he said.

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