KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 21 — The Ministry of Entrepreneur Development (MED) will organise a programme to assist small and medium enterprises (SME) gain access to funding to expand their businesses. 

Its minister Datuk Seri Mohd Redzuan Yusof said the ministry was targeting to raise funds of about RM1 billion under the programme, which is expected to be held between March and April this year.

According to him, the ministry was in the midst of getting banks, financial institutions, and related organisations to provide the funds for SME entrepreneurs.

"For example, we have the SME Investment Partner (SIP) programme by SME Corporation Malaysia that offers loans for SMEs but which were not taken up.

"We also received visits from a number of financial institutions asking when are the entrepreneurs coming to them and apply for loans from the funds that had been allocated,” he told reporters after attending a minister-SME session here, today.

He said local SMEs today are more focused on services while the funds covered various sectors and industries in Malaysia.

"Yes, the services (sector) is among the prime drivers to the SMEs, but we need to have a fair distribution of facilitation to make us become a producing nation in terms of utilising our raw materials to produce more value-added products for export,” he said.

Meanwhile, the session organised by SME Corp was attended by more than 300 participants including SMEs, industry players, chambers of commerce, agency heads and ministry representatives.

The session aimed to obtain feedback from the SMEs on initiatives and development programmes implemented for them by the ministry. — Bernama