KUCHING, June 4: Ministry of Entrepreneur Development and Cooperatives (Medac) assures that assistance programmes will continue to be implemented to help small-medium enterprises (SMEs) if the Movement Control Order (MCO) is extended.
Its Minister Datuk Seri Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar said the extension of the MCO depends on the result of the two-week long MCO implemented nationwide as announced by Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin.
He explained that the government insists that entrepreneurs and the public at large conform to the standard operating procedures (SOPs) set in order to shorten the lockdown period.
“On the ministry side, our programmes such as the digitalisation program and the control programmes, will continue to be implemented, regardless of the extension or not,” he said.
Wan Junaidi said this during a press conference on the Impact of the MCO implementation on entrepreneurs in Malaysia, held online, today.
On the impact of the MCO extension, Wan Junaidi said it will definitely affect the country’s economy because every single day that businesses are closed, based on the present estimate, the country loses up to RM800 million daily.
According to him, unlike the first MCO implemented from March to May, 2021, about RM2.4 billion losses were recorded per day.
“For this RM700 to RM800 million losses per day, it is quite a big amount of losses daily and we cannot afford that.
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“Beyond that, we will lose 90 per cent of the SMEs, that is employing about 3.7 million employees. This is what we are trying to avoid,” he added. — DayakDaily
