KUALA LUMPUR: Development Financial Institutions (DFIs) need to give their full support to the country’s economic recovery, in the spirit of #KeluargaMalaysia.
Finance Minister Tengku Datuk Seri Zafrul Abdul Aziz (pic) said the support could come in various forms, including providing the necessary financing to help businesses to recover and sustain themselves, while creating job opportunities that would support Malaysian livelihoods.
“Immediate support from the DFIs to avoid a long-term impact is especially crucial for micro, small and medium enterprises in strategic sectors such as agriculture, infrastructure development, maritime activities, exports and high-tech and capital-intensive industries,” he said in the 67th Inter-Agencies Economic Stimulus Implementation and Coordination Unit (Laksana) Report released yesterday.
Tengku Zafrul added that DFIs play a strategic and important role in formulating an integrated national economic recovery strategy, contributing to critical efforts to restore and preserve business capacities, in line with its objective as an important instrument of socio-economic development.
As such, he suggested for DFIs to come up with practical solutions such as non-burdensome financing to enable businesses to recover and resume their operations as soon as possible.
On Bank Negara’s decision to maintain the overnight policy rate at 1.75%, he said the Monetary Policy Committee’s stance was both appropriate and accommodative.
“Aside from that, fiscal and financial measures will continue to alleviate the economic impact on businesses and households and support economic activities,” he said, noting that the global economy has continued to recover on the back of increasing manufacturing and services activities.
As for Malaysia’s economy, Tengku Zafrul noted that the reimplementation of Covid-19 containment measures has hampered the growth momentum.
“However, the gradual easing of restrictions which allows more economic sectors to resume their activities will mitigate the impact, allowing the economy to remain on the path to recovery.
“Moving forward, the further easing of containment measures, the rapid progress in local vaccinations and the continuous global demand growth will help to support the country’s growth momentum in 2022,” he added.
In the Laksana report, Tengku Zafrul added that a total of RM12.3bil of Special Covid-19 Aid (BKC), encompassing Bantuan Prihatin Nasional 2.0 (BPN 2.0), Bantuan Prihatin Rakyat (BPR) and BPR Tambahan, has been distributed to almost 10 million recipients.
The balance of the BPR payments (Phase 3 and appeals), BKC (Phase 2 dan Phase 3) and Loss of Income Aid (BKP) totalling RM4.8bil are expected to be disbursed from September to December 2021.
Under the hiring of workers incentive programme PenjanaKerjaya, the government has distributed RM995.36mil to 33,304 employers, helping to sustain 256,253 jobs.
The minister said that up to Aug 27, 137,659 workers had managed to get jobs through the government’s job hiring incentives and training programmes.
For the wage subsidy programme (PSU), 322,177 employers and 2.64 million workers have received benefits via PSU 1.0 under the Prihatin and Penjana packages.
Up to Aug 27, applications for wage subsidy that had been approved hit RM12.929bil. — Bernama