Najib launches campaign to boost SME exports

PUTRAJAYA: Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Abdul Razak today launched a brand awareness campaign, 'Beyond Nations', which aims to encourage and promote more small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to export.
Najib launched the campaign after chairing the third National Export Council meeting at Perdana Putra today.
Minister of International Trade and Industry Minister, Datuk Seri Mustapa Mohamed, said the campaign was in line with the government's continuous initiatives to increase the contributions from SMEs to exports from 17.6% now to 23% by 2020.
He said the campaign's main pillars were to communicate, educate and nurture SMEs of all levels, especially first-time exporters.
"We want SME entrepreneurs to not only market their products at the local market but dare enough to venture abroad.
"Educating the SMEs is our biggest challenge to make them understand the export business," he told a media briefing after the launch of the campaign.
Meanwhile, Malaysia External Trade Development Corp's (Matrade) Chief Executive Officer, Datuk Dzulkifli Mahmud, said the agency aimed to make SMEs think of the market outside the country.
The majority of the SMEs, despite making up about 97% of business establishments in Malaysia, only catered to the local market, he said. He said currently, there were over 700,000 SMEs in Malaysia.
"We want SMEs to go beyond borders, beyond their local mindset and to break out of their comfort zone into a vast overseas market," he said.
Dzulkifli said Malaysia currently ranked as 23rd largest world exporting country.
"The country, which exports to over 200 countries, aims to be among the top 20 world's largest exporting countries with the launch of the campaign," he said.
In a statement released in conjunction with the launch of the campaign, Matrade said, SMEs' share of total exports was small, at between 10 and and 29.9% in Asean.
According to the SME Annual Report 2014/2015, the Malaysian SMEs' concentration are in the services sector with 90% (580,985) establishments, while six per cent of total SMEs (37,861) are in the manufacturing sector followed by three per cent in the construction sector (19,283).
The remaining one per cent (6,708) are in the agriculture sector and 0.1% in the mining and quarrying sector. The SMEs' share of the total employment rate is 65%. — Bernama