KUALA LUMPUR, June 12 — The Malaysian Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) is expecting a 20 per cent growth in e-commerce contribution to the digital economy this year despite the enforced movement control order (MCO).
In a statement, it said the projected growth could be achieved through the active intervention of various ecosystem partners via ongoing initiatives and MDEC potentially see the expected contribution to gross domestic product (GDP) to go up to as high as RM170 billion for 2020.
“To the people, businesses and communities that are looking forward to further support within the digital space, I encourage you to step up and take this opportunity, regardless of your background and nature of the business to be part of this digital ecosystem as the nation recovers from this pandemic.
“Penjana is that much-needed boost to restore incomes, lifestyles and provides assistance for us to overcome the current challenges and look firmly to the future,” said MDEC’s chief executive officer Surina Shukri.
The government allocation of RM700 million within National Economic Recovery Plan (Penjana) to spur the digital economy, would increase confidence to leap from the Restart phase marked by the conditional MCO (CMCO), through the ‘Recovery’ phase or recovery MCO (RMCO).
In the wake of Penjana, loans under the RM100 million SME Digitalisation Matching Grant, RM500 million SME Technology Transformation Fund (application to open next month) and RM100 million Smart Automation Grant initiatives that were previously announced, would be streamlined to aid small and medium enterprises (SMEs).
MDEC would be working with relevant agencies to identify ways to track and measure in making sure over 907,065 SMEs in Malaysia benefit from these incentives.
“As of to date, MDEC’s SME digitalisation initiatives have onboarded a total of 230 Technology Solution Providers with 595 digital and technology solutions to support over 200 SMEs.
“While under the MDEC’s 100 Go Digital programme, MDEC has engaged more than 100,000 SMEs nationwide with the support of 12 industry partners,” it said in a statement today.
On reskilling and upskilling, the RM25 million allocated to MDEC would go to the Global Online Workforce (Glow) programme, to train Malaysians earning an income as freelancers for jobs in the global digital economy.
Glow is a sub-programme under the MDEC’s eRezeki programme which provides training, coaching and mentoring to individuals with skills in certain areas such as programming, creative design, business and administrative support, and language-based tasks such as translation and transcription that enables individuals to generate high income digitally.
In 2019, a total of 10,043 Glow participants generated RM 69.26 million in the form of income by performing services mainly to international clients.
MDEC would also continue to support other government agencies following the allocation of RM2 billion for reskilling and upskilling programmes, for youth and unemployed workers, as this is expected to benefit over 200,000 people in the country.
Meanwhile, MDEC’s e-commerce team is still in the discussion stage with the Finance Ministry (MOF) in finalising the execution of the Shop Malaysia Online campaign plan on incentives.
The campaign is to encourage online shopping by offering promotional codes and various discount vouchers through e-commerce platforms.
— Bernama
