{"id":14879,"date":"2022-09-13T15:46:57","date_gmt":"2022-09-13T07:46:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/?p=14879"},"modified":"2022-09-13T15:46:59","modified_gmt":"2022-09-13T07:46:59","slug":"govt-focuses-on-policies-to-support-businesses-banks-to-help-smes-with-repayment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/?p=14879","title":{"rendered":"Govt focuses on policies to support businesses; banks to help SMEs with repayment"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 13<\/strong> \u2014 The decision on whether or not to\u00a0grant\u00a0moratoriums\u00a0to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) is very much dependent\u00a0on whether the banks think that the SMEs have repayment issues, said Finance Minister Tengku Datuk Seri Zafrul Abdul Aziz.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the government can encourage policies that are helping and assisting the people, he said while expressing hope that banks and Bank Negara Malaysia will continue to support the SMEs and micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) that are genuinely facing difficulties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m optimistic, together with Bank Negara, that our (economic) growth this year will even surpass our expectation, which is between 5.3 and 6.3 per cent.”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe are on a growth trajectory, the economy is growing so we need to support the companies that are still in need,\u201d<\/em> he told a press conference on the sidelines of the Malaysian Banking Conference 2022 today.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"banks\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Tengku Zafrul\u00a0pointed out that Malaysia\u2019s economy has been growing\u00a0strongly so far, thanks to rising domestic consumption, a stronger\u00a0export sector\u00a0and better loan growth, among others, thus the measures taken during the pandemic-triggered economic crisis might not be the best solution for now.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said limited resources should be used to help target groups, and blanket support might not be sustainable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The minister noted that SMEs and MSMEs have received a lot of assistance from the government, such as financing with moratorium in Budget 2022 under the Semarak Niaga initiative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, the Small and Medium Enterprises Association Malaysia (Samenta) has been reported as saying that another loan moratorium will only exacerbate the SMEs\u2019 problems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tengku Zafrul said the banks are starting to lend even more than the pre-pandemic level, adding that the banking sector\u2019s net financing had grown by 4.9 per cent in the second quarter of this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe disbursement has actually surpassed the pre-pandemic level, it went up to\u00a0RM71 billion in the second quarter of 2022 compared to an average of RM57 billion during 2017-2019. So banks are still lending,\u201d<\/em> he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NMT<\/a> as reported by Bernama<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 13 \u2014 The decision on whether or not to\u00a0grant\u00a0moratoriums\u00a0to small and medium…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14880,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,17,524],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-economy","category-nation"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/Screenshot-2022-09-13-at-3.43.12-PM.png",1176,638,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/Screenshot-2022-09-13-at-3.43.12-PM-150x150.png",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/Screenshot-2022-09-13-at-3.43.12-PM-300x163.png",300,163,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/Screenshot-2022-09-13-at-3.43.12-PM-768x417.png",640,348,true],"large":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/Screenshot-2022-09-13-at-3.43.12-PM-1024x556.png",640,348,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/Screenshot-2022-09-13-at-3.43.12-PM.png",1176,638,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/Screenshot-2022-09-13-at-3.43.12-PM.png",1176,638,false],"newsium-slider-full":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/Screenshot-2022-09-13-at-3.43.12-PM.png",1176,638,false],"newsium-featured":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/Screenshot-2022-09-13-at-3.43.12-PM.png",1024,556,false],"newsium-medium":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/Screenshot-2022-09-13-at-3.43.12-PM.png",720,391,false]},"author_info":{"info":["Editor"]},"category_info":"Business<\/a> Economy<\/a> Nation<\/a>","tag_info":"Nation","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14879"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14879\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14881,"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14879\/revisions\/14881"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}