Bridging economic gap through BETR 2.0
PUTRAJAYA: In a move to narrow the economic gap between Bumiputeras and non-Bumiputeras, the government has launched an upgraded version of the Bumiputera Economic Transformation Roadmap (BETR), or BETR 2.0.
After BETR 1.0’s contribution of over RM100 billion to the Malaysian economy, BETR 2.0 will focus on five areas, namely education and human capital; employment and income; corporate equity; and, entrepreneurship and non-financial assets.
In the education sector, Education director-general Tan Sri Dr Khair Mohamad Yusof said one of the suggestions made during yesterday’s workshops included getting Form 4 and Form 5 students involved in the smalland medium-sized enterprise (SME) industry.
“Form 4 and Form 5 students can benefit from skills training throughout their attachment with the SMEs.
“At the same time, businesses will have a good supply of skilled employees in future.”
Both the education and SME sectors welcomed this proposal.
“Students who do not wish to continue their studies after Sijil Pelajaran Malaysiacan straightaway enter the job market.
“This could also address the issue of employee shortage faced by SMEs, which resort to hiring foreigners.”
Khair said other governmental agencies, such as the Skills Development Department, would also need to get on board for the proposal to be successful.
If a framework could be completed by this year, he was hopeful that the programme could start as early as next year.
He was speaking at a workshop on BETR 2.0 here yesterday.
The workshop also highlighted the need to empower more Bumiputera women economically, in view of the increasing number of women joining the workforce.
Tan Sri Shahrizat Abdul Jalil, who is the adviser on women entrepreneurship and professional development at the Prime Minister’s Department, said it was timely for the government to draft an agenda specifically for women’s economic development as they, too, were contributors to the country’s economic stability.
“There were several issues discussed in the workshop, like the disparity in rural and urban areas where women entrepreneurs from rural areas are facing difficulties in accessing entrepreneurial ecosystems compared with those from the urban setting.
“The workshop also touched on the unequal treatment women entrepreneurs claim to be receiving compared with their male counterparts.”
She said that new buildings built in the city centre should be more family-friendly by having an intergrated community centre to create a more balanced ecosystem at workplaces.
To gather more data on women’s contribution to the economy, Shahrizat said empirical research must be conducted to develop a gender-specific database to better target women entrepreneurs according to their fields.
“By having the data, we would be able to identify the field with the highest women involvement, their contribution based onfieldsand which field can be given more attention.”