Malaysia's Central Bank Has A Role To Ensure Funding Ecosystem For SMEs Is Comprehensive

KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 26 (Bernama) -- Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM or Malaysia's Central Bank) has a role to ensure the funding ecosystem is comprehensive to meet the various funding needs of the small and medium enterprises (SMEs). BNM Director of Development Finance and Enterprise Department, Marina Abdul Kahar, said as at end-2015, financial institutions gave out US$68.31 billion (RM274.5 billion) in loans to 730,000 SMEs. "The financial institutions always give their support as seen in the high fund approval rate of around 80 per cent for SMEs," she said at the opening of Malayan Banking Bhd's 'Building Capacity and Competitiveness of SMEs' progamme on Thursday. The text of her speech was released here Thursday. Marina said the central bank has undertaken various initiatives to help potential entrepreneurs get access to funding, among them, SME Special Fund. "With BNM's SME Special Fund, entrepreneurs can enjoy funding at a competitive rate of between 3.75 per cent and six per cent, for use as working capital and to increase production capacity," she said. Marina said the Micro Financing Scheme, which was introduced in 2006, would also provide easy business financing of up to US$12,443 (RM50,000) and without collateral. "There is also a scheme by the Credit Guarantee Corp Malaysia Bhd to help SMEs which do not have collaterals and credit record to get financing from financial institutions," she said. She said the Association of Banks in Malaysia's PARTNER programme helped the SMEs by providing a checklist and standard application forms/documents to enable the banks to process the applications for loans. --BERNAMA