BUTTERWORTH, May 9 — The Ministry of Entrepreneur and Cooperatives Development (MECD) will launch a one-stop portal for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) this month to facilitate access to information related to financing, training and various government support programmes.

Its Minister, Steven Sim Chee Keong said the portal was created following feedback received from industry players who described information related to SME assistance as too fragmented currently involving various ministries and agencies.

“The government has allocated large resources including RM50 billion through Budget 2026 and an additional RM10 billion announced by the Prime Minister, making a total of RM60 billion for the SME sector.

“But the problem is that it is spread across various agencies. There are entrepreneurs, especially small traders, who do not know where to look, what programmes there are, what policies and what sources of financing,” he told reporters after a town hall dialogue session with the Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers (FMM) Penang here today.

Sim said the portal is currently in the development process and is expected to be launched this month.

“The aim is to make it a one-stop portal in terms of information for SMEs because we understand that one of the complaints from small entrepreneurs is that they do not know which agency to refer to because there are too many channels available,” he said.

Earlier in the dialogue session, Sim said the government was actively working to open up more financing space not only through loans, but also through collaboration with the banking sector and private capital to help SMEs increase capacity and competitiveness.

He said his party had also held meetings with representatives of various SME associations, chambers of commerce and bank chief executive officers to discuss measures to strengthen the sector’s financing ecosystem.

“The government wants to help SMEs grow and improve competitiveness, but at the same time, the governance aspect needs to be ensured so that the assistance provided is truly utilised effectively,” he said.

Sim said his ministry had also engaged with banking institutions and private equity (PE) firms to find ways to expand access to financing for SMEs.

He said among the issues raised by the PE firms was the level of readiness of some local SMEs to accept equity investments as well as challenges related to the governance of family companies.

“The PE firms said they wanted to help potential SMEs, but there were challenges in terms of company structure and acceptance of external equity holdings,” he said. — Bernama