KUCHING: A total of 2,415 Sarawakians had been trained under e-Entrepreneurs Programme since January 2016 until April 2017.
This was revealed by Minister of International Trade and E-Commerce Dato Sri Wong Soon Koh in his winding up speech at State Legislative Assembly (DUN) sitting on Friday.
“The programme was an innitiative by Malaysia Digital Economic Corporation (MDEC), an agency under Ministry of Communication and Multimedia Malaysia (MCMM).
“Out of 2,415 Sarawak participants, 1,009 had reported an increase in their sales by RM950,000. This is the kind of impact that we aspire for our local businesses to achieve in the long run,” said Wong.
He suggested local companies to capitalise on e-Trade which is an initiative under the Digital Malaysia programme to accelerate exports for the participating agencies by providing a financial assistance of RM5,000 to qualified Malaysian companies to cover the relevant expenses.
“In addition, advisory services on e-Marketplaces together with basic and advanced training are also provided to participating companies for on boarding and optimisation of products.
“The number of registered local companies participating in e-Commerce is only eight, according to the records of Malaysia Companies Commission (SSM),
“Although there are more unregistered players in the market, this statistic indicates that there is much room for improvement in the involvement of local companies in e-Commerce,” said Wong.
He said with regards to international business partners, Sarawak would continue to improve business relationship with present trading partners such as Japan (RM23 billion), China (RM7 billion), South Korea (RM7 billion), Taiwan (RM5 billion) and Peninsular Malaysia (RM13 billion) in order to increase the business volume and capacity for the long run.
“We will intensify our efforts to increase our business volume of RM1 billion each with Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia and RM729 million with Hong Kong to a bigger amount,
“Meanwhile, promotions and engagements with other countries will be intensified in order to widen our business landscape. This is crucial because our international trade volume has decreased from RM123 billion in 2015 to RM116 billion in 2016,” disclosed Wong.
