Thirty One Pct Of SMEs Not Registered With SME Corp

PETALING JAYA, April 10 (Bernama) -- Thirty-one per cent of small-and-medium enterprises (SMEs) in the country which are not registered with SME Corporation Malaysia (SME Corp) are losing out on many opportunities and assistance programmes provided by the agency.

Source from (Bernama): http://www.bernama.com/bernama/v7/bu/newsbusiness.php?id=941045
Published: April 11, 2013

Source from (Business Times): http://www.btimes.com.my/Current_News/BTIMES/articles/10HAFFS/Article/
Published: April 11, 2013

Its Chief Executive Officer, Datuk Hafsah Hashim, said SMEs must register with the corporation if they wish to develop their businesses further.

"They have a business licence but unfortunately they are not registered with SME Corp," she told reporters after opening a Women Entrepreneur Networking Programming here today.

Hafsah said SME Corp was not able to gauge the performance of these unregistered SMES nor extend technical and financial help to them.

"SME Corporation is drawing up special incentives which we hope the government would consider and implement by 2014," Hafsah said, adding that the agency, with the cooperation of the Companies Commission of Malaysia, would soon undertake a registration exercise for companies that have yet to register with the agency.

Earlier in her speech, she said women entrepreneurs were more aggressive now judging from the 127,091 enterprises owned by them now compared with 82,911 companies they operated in 2006.

The 2011 Economic Census carried out by the Statistics Department revealed that 91.7 per cent or 116,542 women-owned enterprises were operating in the services sector and seven per cent or 8,896 companies in the manufacturing sector.

"We are targeting women entrepreneurs to account for 30 per cent of the companies operating in 2020," she said.

However, these numbers do not truly reflect the actual situation on the ground as many among them have not registered their businesses with SME Corp.

-- BERNAMA