The Small and Medium Enterprises Association of Malaysia, or SAMENTA, which celebrates
its 37th anniversary this year is committed to continuing to support the country’s SMEs by
championing their plight to the government and other stakeholders.
Chairman Datuk William Ng said this at the association’s central region Lunar New Year
Open House in a hotel in Kuala Lumpur.
“We are committed to supporting the more than one million SMEs in the country. During the December 2021 flood, we activated the SAMENTA Central Task Force, which helped over 200 affected SMEs to make police reports and sought assistance from various government agencies and negotiated for a moratorium with banks.
“This was well appreciated by the affected SMEs, and as such, we are keeping the CTF active in case of future untoward challenges of the same scale happening to the SMEs.
“We will continue working to drive up the productivity of our SMEs. The main challenge for our SMEs is not the lack of financing or even that of labour crunch, but of low margin as a result of low productivity. We are working closely with Malaysia Productivity Corporation to help drive up the productivity of our SMEs through digitalisation and automation,” Ng added.
In her speech, Deputy Minister of Entrepreneurship and Cooperatives Development, Saraswathy Kandasami, the guest of honour, congratulated SAMENTA for its work in supporting the SMEs.
“As the first and largest SME association in the country, SAMENTA has been instrumental in helping SMEs over the years, empowering them and breaching them to global markets. The
ministry look forward to continue working with SAMENTA to improve the capacity and
capability of the SMEs in Malaysia” Saraswathy said.
Over 300 guests turned up for the Lunar New Year Open House, including Ambassador of Peru to Malaysia, Ricardo Morote, Selangor state Exco for Trade and Industry, Datuk Teng Chang Kim, CEO of SME Corp, Rizal Nainy, director general of Malaysia Productivity
Corporation, Datuk Abdul Latif Abu Seman and CEO of Malaysia Institute of Integrity, Datuk
Wan Suraya Wan Radzi.
Also present were former Minister of Human Resources, Tan Sri Dr Fong Chan Onn, co-chairman of PEMUDAH, Dato’ Andy Seo, CEO of InvestKL, Datuk Muhd Azmi Zulkifli, CEO of Technology Depository Agency, Dr Sharoul Jambari, deputy CEO of MIDA, Sivasuriyamoorthy Sundara Raja, and presidents and chairmen of various chambers of commerce and trade associations. Guests were entertained by a pair of lion dance and Chinese face changing performance.
SAMENTA was formed in 1986 and has over 3,000 members across all states in Malaysia.
