Expedite stimulus package to rescue businesses call

KOTA KINABALU: The Federation of Chinese Associations Malaysia (Huazong) president Tan Sri TC Goh has called on the government to speed up the necessary improvements to further enhance the Prihatin Rakyat Stimulus Package.

He said this was necessary so as to rescue the hard hit private business sector in the country, the Small-and-Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in particular, by the Covid-19 pandemic and the ongoing Movement Control Order (MCO) and were facing extreme financial difficulty to stay afloat.

Goh believed in the last few days, the government must have received numerous feedback and suggestions from the business sector, on the urgent need to make necessary amendments and improvements to the said stimulus package, in order to better achieve the government’s goal and aspiration of helping the people of all walks of life to pull through this extremely difficult and challenging time.

He disclosed that Huazong too had submitted its views and proposals concerning this issue to the relevant government departments and the Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin who is also the chairman of the National Economic Action Council (NEAC), after gathering feedback and proposals from the Chinese business community.

“We believe the government will do the necessary improvements to further enhance the stimulus package, but it has to be done as soon as possible, in order to achieve its intended purpose of ‘aving the people and the businesses’,” stressed Goh in a statement issued yesterday.

He acknowledged that the Prihatin Rakyat Stimulus Package unveiled by the government on March 27 was aimed at better mitigating the devastating impact of the worsening Covid-19 outbreak and the ongoing MCO on the people and businesses, was commendable and should be supported by all Malaysians.

“However, many quarters opined that the government should place more emphasis and focus on the private sector, especially the SMEs, the public listed companies and their subsidiaries, to ensure that the stimulus package is really effective in helping them,” he said.

Hog noted that among its 10-point proposal to the Government, Huazong called for the setting up a Special Committee to quickly conduct a brainstorming session to roll out a ‘Special stimulus package’ to better assist and safeguard the private sector, to prevent it from collapsing, in case the MCO has to be further extended after this due to a worsening situation.

Goh underscored that it was important that the government must do all it could within its powers to assist the private sector to ensure that it is intact, stable and continue to grow, regardless of the Covid-19 situation.

Otherwise, it may result in businesses shutting down and triggering widespread unemployment, which would have a far-reaching and devastating effect on the economy of the country and inflict a terrible hardship to the people at large.

He further noted that Huazong in its memorandum also proposed the government not to inflict further burden on the borrowers such as imposing the compound interest for bank loans which are guaranteed by the Bank Negara, during the grace period, and to consider further reducing the interest rates; to waive the interest for bank overdrafts by the SMEs and to extend the repayment period to at least six months; besides relaxing the conditions of loan application, so as to provide swift assistance to those who are badly affected.

Huazong also proposed that during this extraordinary time, the Securities Commission should advise Bank Negara toofficially instruct the banks “to stop squeezing public listed companies for the margin shortfall, or to commit them to force selling of their stocks.”

This is in order to allow the listed companies to have sufficient cash-flow to stay afloat during this period of time.

“Besides this, we also called on the government to temporarily cancel the Sales and Services Tax (SST) for at least one year. And this should also apply to the separate SST that is currently collected by the Sabah and Sarawak state governments. This is so as to stabilize the prices of goods and to lessen the burden of the people and the manufacturers,” he added.