MITI sure of getting over 500 SMEs for Industry4WRD programme

KUALA LUMPUR: The Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) is confident of getting more than 500 small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to sign up for the readiness assessment (RA) programme under the Industry4WRD framework by year-end.

Deputy Minister Dr Ong Kian Ming said since the launch of the programme in January this year, about 300 SMEs had signed up although none have been selected yet for the programme.

“We are into the second half of our outreach now and we are planning to go to some smaller cities in different states like Batu Pahat in Johor, Taiping (Perak) and perhaps some of the other places with industrial activities in Selangor. We are still identifying those places.

“We also want to do more outreach via social media like emails to get more SMEs to sign up, especially those from less-developed states such as in the east coast of Peninsular Malaysia as well as Sabah and Sarawak,” he told reporters on the sidelines of the CEO Forum 2019 yesterday.

Ong was one of the speakers at the forum’s plenary session entitled “Understanding and Accelerating the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0)”.

He said it was a challenge to get the SMEs to play a more active role in the revolution of Industry 4.0 but it was a challenge that MITI was willing to face and undertake.

“Out of the total SMEs nationwide, I am not sure how many (of them), in terms of Industry 4.0 readiness assessment, have heard of this particular programme.

“I don’t think it’s worrying... it shows the sort of challenges that we are facing because many of the SMEs still don’t know about this industry, so now it is even more urgent for us to do more outreach in different ways so that they sign up for this programme,” he added.

In terms of the number of participants, Ong said the government had budgeted a sum of RM15 million for some 500 SMEs (to undertake the programme) as was announced in the 2019 budget by the Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng.

“However, we want more firms to sign up so if they were to be chosen this time around, there may be another opportunity for them to be selected, and they can also sign up for the RA programme and pay for it themselves as well,” he added.

Ong said the selected SMEs would be announced in stages beginning the second quarter of this year, concurrently with the second outreach programme.