Kota Kinabalu: Entrepreneurs are urged to prepare for the challenges of complying with environment, social, governance (ESG) practices within the business ecosystem.
Entrepreneur Development and Cooperatives (MEDC) Minister Datuk Ewon Benedick emphasised that ESG, though in its early stages of implementation, would become the key for assessing the capabilities of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs).
“Evolving ESG requirements make it increasingly important, aligning with Malaysia’s commitment to the 2030 sustainable development agenda,” said Ewon during the launch of the two-day Jelajah Jiwa SME 2023 event at a shopping mall here.
Sabah serves as the first stop of the tour before going to Johor, Kelantan, Penang and Kuala Lumpur.
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Ewon encouraged entrepreneurs to adopt ESG practices.
“ESG not only yields positive social and environmental impacts, such as increased productivity, cost savings and improved brand reputation but also facilitates penetration into the supply chains of large firms and multinational corporations.
“Many of these companies have set ESG compliance requirements for marketing their products and services,” he said.
In Sabah, he said MEDC recently launched several initiatives, including the tamu entrepreneur financing scheme (Sput), micro entrepreneur business (BizME), budding bumiputera entrepreneur (Tube), bumiputera enterprise improvement (BEEP) and BRtani financing (BRTani).
Sput provided by Tekun Nasional offers financing to entrepreneurs in Sabah and Sarawak.
The maximum funding limit is RM5,000, covered by Socso’s self-employed social security scheme as insurance coverage.
As of July 12, 2023, Tekun channelled financing worth RM1.42 million to 289 entrepreneurs, he said.
Additionally, SME Corp allocated a grant of RM453,245 under BizME, benefiting over 155 entrepreneurs in Sabah.
Up until June 2023, SME Bank approved more than RM48 million for MSMEs in Sabah, he said.
MEDC and its agencies offer various training and entrepreneurship development programmes nationwide to provide knowledge, skills and practical support to entrepreneurs, he said.
The initiatives include professional training and education for growing entrepreneurs (Protege) benefitted 12,450 graduates, involving the implementation of new generation entrepreneur online bootcamp (N Gene) and student-preneur and biz apprenticeship programme (Space), he said.
In addition, the graduate capacity and employability enhancement programme (Grace), entrepreneurship basic taining (ETR 101) and career journey programme (Road).
MEDC also implements the targeted entrepreneurship tour programme which targets women, B40 and prisoners or supervised persons which aims to inculcate entrepreneurial values and mindsets among the target group.
Until June 2023, a total of 515 participants benefited from this programme, he said.
In addition, he said the capable and confident entrepreneur programme (Care) had also been implemented for the disabled group to cultivate entrepreneurial mindset and empowerment among the disabled where 91 participants have attended the training.
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