Govt to continue engaging young adults, graduates in franchise business

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KUALA LUMPUR: The government will continue promoting the franchise industry and engage young adults and graduates to be involved in this business model.

To date, the businesses of 35 local franchisors had penetrated into 49 countries including China, India and those in the Middle East but the majority of them are still focused around the Asia-Pacific region.

Domestic Trade, Cooperatives and Consumerism Minister Datuk Ismail Sabri Yaakob said this after launching the Franchise International Malaysia (FIM) 2011 here yesterday.

Jointly organised by the Domestic Trade, Cooperatives and Consumerism Ministry and Malaysian Franchise Association (MFA), the exhibition from July 22 to July 24 targets to attract more than 10,000 visitors and achieve RM345 million in transactions.

Last year’s event attracted more than 8,000 visitors, generating RM327 million in transactions.

“With the government realising franchising as a method of business that is able to reduce failure rates, we have been under a lot of focus recently and also organising key programmes for our circle of franchisors and franchisees,” MFA chief executive Sofia Leong Abdullah said.

She said MFA had been organising a lot of exposure programmes for the local franchise industry given the fact that the government was helping to promote them as well.

“There is still a lot more potential for the industry to grow further locally, and it is actually doing quite well compared with other larger overseas countries,” she said.

In fact, she said that last year, the number of brands approved by the government to operate locally had doubled compared with 2009.

“The trend currently is moving into micro and mobile franchising, and we are able to assist people to convert their businesses into something franchisable before they move on to franchise their brands,” she said. — Bernama