CYBERJAYA, June 19 — Entrepreneur seed fund Malaysian Global Innovation and Creativity Centre (MaGIC) may not be disbanded after all, despite being among matters discussed during the first Cabinet meeting of the Pakatan Harapan government.

Its chief executive officer, Ashran Ghazi, told a press conference today that he met with the Finance Ministry within a week of the Cabinet meeting.

“We are under the Finance Ministry so we report to them. After our meeting, the ministry told us it was ‘business as usual’. I can’t remember the exact date but I remember it was within a week of the report that MaGIC might be axed was published (by the media),” said Ashran.

However, Ashran expected his agency to also face the budget cuts being imposed on other parts of the government.

Advertisement

Since its 2014 inception, MaGIC has received a budget of around RM50 million a year for a total of RM197 million.

However, Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng, who launched the second batch of MaGIC’s Global Accelerator Programme (GAP) today, declined to comment on the agency’s future.

“I have nothing new to say. If there is something new to say, I will say it. That’s all,” said Lim.

Advertisement

He expressed support for social and technological entrepreneurs during the event’s question and answer session.

However, Lim stated that the RM1 billion Young Entrepreneurs Empowerment Fund, which was among pledges in the PH manifesto, may not be feasible at the moment due to the state of the government’s finances.

He said that while the coalition remained committed to delivering these and other election pledges, the outlook was not promising due to the country’s debts and liabilities that he previously revealed as topping RM1 trillion.

“We need to bring stability to our finances before implementing all these promises. I hope you give us some time. We have fulfilled our principle promise on GST and BR1M.

“Even without GST we won’t go bankrupt and can still pay Bantuan Sara Hidup Rakyat (formerly known as BR1M),” Lim said.

He earlier told attendees about the need for determination, resilience and sacrifice in order to achieve their dreams.