PETALING JAYA: Business owners, entrepreneurs, and students have welcomed the government’s digitalisation initiatives in the 2021 budget, saying that going digital would help them move forward with the new norms.
Michael Kang, president of the SME Association of Malaysia, said the RM150 million in grants for the digitalisation and automation of SMEs would likely encourage more people to conduct business online.
He added that the budget’s initiatives, such as the RM150 million allocated for the Shop Malaysia Online campaign, were especially important given the Covid-19 crisis where face-to-face sales were a health risk.
“A lot of SMEs are still very traditional, so they need to go digital and do online business. With the pandemic, everyone is not able to go out and SMEs need to communicate with the customers and sell their services online,” he told FMT.
Kang said the government’s plans also provided long-term solutions for businesses to sustain during the pandemic, adding that utilising digital platforms was the only way forward.
“SMEs will not be able to survive if they stick to traditional ways. Without adopting digitalisation, they would definitely close down in the next two to three years.”
He hoped the application and approval process would be made easy, so as not to further inconvenience business owners who were already struggling.
Hanteh Ginsos, a coffee farmer in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, said the RM35 million to promote local products was a good effort from Putrajaya to help microbusinesses such as his.
Ginsos, who used to run an ecotourism business and took tourists through the traditional coffee farming process, decided to sell coffee beans on e-commerce platform Shopee after the movement control order (MCO) was imposed in March.
Currently, he said 90% of his revenue came from online sales, as current lockdown restrictions in Sabah made it almost impossible to deliver products in person.
He also welcomed the RM150 million for training programmes and assistance for 100,000 entrepreneurs, saying it was much-needed support for people to set up their stores online.
“Most of my friends, who are small-time entrepreneurs, have tried to go digital but are still stuck because of the costs involved.
“Websites require a lot of maintenance, while advertising and marketing requires a lot of money. So, we’re applying for these grants to ease our financial burdens.”
Meanwhile, Universiti Malaysia Terengganu (UMT) student body president Aina Zafirah said she appreciated the decision to upgrade internet connectivity speeds in universities, as online learning was now part of the new norm.
Noting that many students still lacked proper materials to attend online classes, Aina said the budget’s allocations were a “good first step” to help students access education remotely.
Under the budget, the government allocated RM500 million to improve the digital connectivity of 430 schools nationwide under the JENDELA initiative, while some 150,000 students will receive laptops under the CERDIK fund.
Separately, those in the bottom 40 (B40) will receive RM180 worth of telco credit and free data.
Source: https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2020/11/16/budgets-digitalisation-efforts-to-help-rakyat-ease-through-the-new-normal/