‘Local manufacturers need more support’

SEPANG: The Digital Free Trade Zone (DFTZ) Goes Live was an awaited event for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that wanted to take full advantage of the state-of-the-art e-commerce hub to expand their market shares globally.

Secretariat for the Advancement of Malaysian Entrepreneurs (Same) adviser Peter Phang said DFTZ would be a game-changer for SMEs.

“Our country is officially the digital free trade hub for this part of the world. We are being transformed and recognised in the digital world,” he said here yesterday.

He said the presence of 20 top global freight forwarders in DFTZ would make Malaysia more accessible to the world.

“Today marks the flag-off of 1,900 Malaysian SMEs to ride on the digital bandwagon for global trade.”

The managing director of Love A Durian, Benson Wong, said he believed in the power of e-commerce, especially for Malaysian products to penetrate the Chinese market.

“DFTZ allows SMEs like us to participate in cross-border e-commerce and open up the market, especially in China. It saves a lot of time because our stock can be parked in the DFTZ warehouse. Imagine the speed of sending our products from Shah Alam to Penang, or to China.”

But for green household and industrial cleaning products exporter Kleenso Resources Sdn Bhd, DFTZ needed to support more local manufacturers.

Its founder, Lee Teck Meng, said: “DFTZ will benefit online traders. It can benefit Malaysian manufacturers like me.

“But we need to do more to manage and promote our products that will compete with Chinese products.

“Local manufacturers will choose exhibition over an e-commerce platform because of its direct and bigger impact.”

Sharing the same sentiment, Young Entrepreneurs Association president Agil Faisal Ahmad Fadzil said DFTZ’s mechanics needed to be outlined and improved to support local e-commerce players and homegrown products.

“DFTZ should facilitate local SMEs in embracing e-commerce because our take-up rate is low. We need to scale up SMEs, which are better at business-to-consumer (B2C) services compared with business-to-business (B2B), as done by Alibaba.”

There are also concerns over different market requirements, especially in China, which many local SMEs are unfamiliar with.