Matrade urges SMES to make exporting their business
KUCHING: Malaysian small and medium enterprises (SMEs) must include exporting in their business plan from the earlier stages of their business operation - this was the message championed by Malaysia’s only trade promotion organisation, Malaysia External Trade Development Corporation (Matrade) through its chief executive officer Dato’ Wan Latiff Wan Musa at the SME CEO Forum.
The forum targeted an attendance of 1,000 SMEs and was organised by Business Media International (BMI) at Menara Matrade. Matrade was the event’s Official Market Access Partner.
Matrade’s call for SMEs to export is to address SMEs’ small contribution in export. Currently, local SMEs only contributed about 18 per cent in export despite making up 98 per cent of Malaysian business KUALA LUMPUR: Prominent economist Prof Dr Jomo Kwame Sundaram today stressed on the need for political commitment to push for a swift implementation of the renewable energy (RE) agenda as the enforcement of the alternative energy is seen to be lagging behind.
Jomo, who is also Khazanah Research Institute senior adviser, noted that there were RE resources to be considered such as photovoltaic solar establishments.
“One of the main reasons for this is due to lack of knowledge about market access and readiness among SMEs in exporting. We can’t iterate enough the importance for SMEs to be part of the global business because technological advancements in the digital world are so rapid that the world community is becoming closer by the day. It is almost impossible for SMEs to ignore the export business if they wish to remain relevant for a long time,” Wan Latiff said.
He added that it is important for SMEs to be fully prepared when they are ready to approach exports in their business cycle with clear export strategies drawing from their own strengths and leveraging on market opportunities.
“In any business cycle for SMEs, there is a panels in which the cost of implementation was cheap.
“Looking at, for example, photovoltaic solar panels, it generally (is) the cheapest.
“I think the general agreement is, it’s not a question of cost but (is there) other enabling conditions. It is really very much a political question and I think the rise of such concerns could be due to the fundamental change in conversation (for instance, climate change) in period focusing on the developmental aspects of their companies such as on business strategy, financial strength, governance, and production capacity among others. This is a very crucial period as SMEs’ involvement or success in exporting is determined at this stage.”
Wan Latiff noted that at this stage, SMEs should leverage on the facilitations offered by development bodies or agencies that are tasked to develop entrepreneurship such as the Ministry of Entrepreneur Development and its agencies such as SME Corp and SME Bank.
“Once they are ready they can then come to Matrade to get assistance in internationalising their business. We have experience in internationally positioning Malaysian SMEs spanning over 25 years and have 46 trade offices around the world.” many parts of the world,” he said during a discussion on “A New World Order” yesterday.
He was answering a question from the floor on the possibility of the implementation of the new renewable order.
“Looking at what is happening in the renewables (space), it is already happening. The question is whether or not the implementation is going to be made at the governmental level, supra-governmental SHORT-TERM interbank rates remained steady yesterday on Bank Negara Malaysia’s (BNM) operations to reduce excess liquidity from the financial system.
The surplus in the conventional system reduced to RM24.30 billion from RM32.33 billion this morning, while in the Islamic system, it eased to RM14.40 billion from RM16.03 billion.
Earlier yesterday, BNM issued one Range Maturity Auction (RMA) money market tender, one Commodity Murabahah Programme, Bank Negara Interbank Bills and four Qard tenders.
BNM revised the Murabahah overnight tender from RM11.6 billion to RM13.4 billion.
At 4 pm, the central bank conducted a RM24.3 billion conventional money market tender and a RM13.4 billion Murabahah money market tender, both for one-day money. level or local and municipal governmental level, to try to accelerate that whole transition.
“The transitions are different in different parts of the world and I don’t think that there is a one size fits all kind of solutions for which we are talking about,” said Jomo, adding the development of other RE alternatives besides photovoltaic solar panels and wind turbines would be very important. — Bernama