Speed up economic revival plans – SME Sabah

0

Foo

KOTA KINABALU: SME Association of Sabah president, N K Foo calls out to the Sabah government to quickly implement the economic revival plans and step up government expenditure to stimulate the local market.

Foo said if the government wishes to stimulate the market, besides direct distribution of money, there are other ways like upgrading of basic infrastructure projects such as roads and bridges repairs in the rural areas etc.

“Works carried out in these open areas during the CMCO period will have little risks of spreading the Covid-19 virus and will inject much needed cash flows into the local economy with the multipler effects.

“Jobs and SME businesses can then be saved to the extent of the implementation of these work programmes.

“At the moment, there is very little cash inflows from the private sectors and from outside Sabah. If the Sabah government doesn’t increase their spending, the local market will be lagging and sluggish,” he said in a statement yesterday.

He hoped that the new Sabah government would take a new approach, and take immediate actions to avoid any further delays, as many businesses are currently struggling to survive.

Foo is also of the view that only through this way that Sabah SMEs will have a higher survival rate in this pandemic period.

“The third wave of the Covid-19 pandemic is much more serious than the first two waves. In the past few months, many SMEs were slowly getting back on their feet and show improvement in their businesses. Just when we thought that the pandemic is ending soon, the third wave suddenly hit us.”

He expressed that due to the implementation of the Conditional Movement Control Order (CMCO) and Enhanced Movement Control Order (EMCO), many people were unemployed, thus resulting in their lower or little spending power.

“This third wave has greatly impacted the SMEs in Sabah; but it’s only the beginning and in the upcoming weeks, the situation will worsen,” he said.

Meanwhile, MCA Sabah chief Lu Yen Tung urged the Federal Government to immediately channel two types of special allocations to assist Sabah in dealing with the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic which has become more serious.

He said that the first special allocation is to assist in containing the spread of pandemic by increasing and improving medical facilities, treatment equipment and screening; adding the number of treatment centres, quarantine, screening and pandemic laboratories; and expanding the number of medical and healthcare staff, research laboratories and others.

“Given the current critical situation, we need more medical manpower and equipment to flatten the curve in the shortest possible time,” he said in a statement yesterday.

The second special allocation, he added, is to preserve the well-being of the people. This should be targeted at the most affected industries or sectors, as well as the B40 group that are most affected by the economic downturn.

This special allocation should also enable the Sabah State Government to formulate assistance schemes to help the worst affected industries such as the tourism industry, he said.

Lu said that apart from the Bantuan Prihatin 2.0 programme as announced by the Federal Government recently, the Sabah State Government could also provide a separate cost of living allowance to the middle and low income groups in the state, while extending and expanding the scope to qualify for the Wage Subsidy Programme; water and electricity tariff discounts; free internet; loan moratorium and the like.

“Sabah as the state most severely affected by the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic desperately needs special attention from Putrajaya through various special strategies and provisions to help the rakyat and industries in facing difficult situations at this time,” he said.