KUALA LUMPUR: Parti Pejuang Tanahair recommends that the government restrict the sale of certain categories of foreign goods in Malaysia's e-commerce marketplace to help local businesses in micro, small and medium industries (MSMEs) recover from the economic crisis.
In a statement today, the party's central economic bureau chairman Armin Baniaz Pahamin said such restriction can also protect the initiatives and efforts by the government, which has allocated RM4.6 billion in 2020 Budget for entrepreneurial development.
Armin said since 2010, the government through Tekun had mentored 219,674 entrepreneurs in various industries through "Program Asas Keusahawanan, Tabung Ekonomi Kumpulan Usaha Niaga", as ell as hundreds of thousands of other entrepreneurs through various government agencies.
"All these efforts will be in vain if local products and goods fail to compete with imported goods from China which are far stronger financially to produce goods and products in bigger quantity and superior quality."
The government has also spent a lot of money campaigning to buy made in Malaysia products.
But without barriers and access control to foreign products, entrepreneurs who were still struggling to survive might no longer be able to survive and the campaign would benefit foreign sellers and imported goods more than the locals, he added.
"The sales restrictions of imported goods on online marketplace such as Lazada and Shopee was well received and implemented by the Indonesian government which has imposed restrictions and control on 13 product categories since May 2021," he said.
Armin said Malaysians bought products from China online worth US$49.4 billion in 2020 and was the world's fourth largest online buyer in terms of gross trade value at last year's 11.11 sales promotion.
This is larger than Singapore (US$28.2 billion), Japan (US$13 billion), the United States (US$12.8 billion), and Taiwan (US$10.3 billion).
He added that the government must study all the categories embarked by entrepreneurs in the MSEMs industry, and help them by restricting online sales from overseas sellers to enable them to recuperate at least until the local economy recovers.
"Apart from restricting the sale of foreign goods, we also urge the government to give more emphasis on small service sectors like barbers, tailors and others as they are not only affected by movement control orders, but they are also still far behind in digitisation," he said.
Source: https://www.nst.com.my/business/2021/10/738068/restrict-online-sale-certain-types-foreign-goods-protect-msmes-pejuang-urges