PENJANA e-commerce campaigns hit RM1.2b sales

KUALA LUMPUR – Two e-commerce campaigns under the National Economic Recovery Plan (PENJANA) have generated combined sales of over RM1.2 billion, as reported on Bernama.

To spur short-term economic recovery, the Micro and Small Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) e-commerce campaign, as well as the Penjana Shop Malaysia Online initiative, were rolled out by the Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) in June and August, respectively, with a RM140 million government allocation.

MDEC chief executive officer Surina Shukri said both initiatives proved that Malaysian businesses and consumers were ready to go digital and strive to make the country an Asean digital hub.

“Today, we reached a milestone in the growth of the PENJANA e-commerce initiatives with total RM1.2 billion sales generated within four months,” she said in a statement on November 5.

The campaigns seek to encourage e-commerce adoption by local businesses and traders to help widen their market reach on digital platforms and were executed using a public-private partnership co-funded with 22 participating e-commerce partners.

To date, participating partners have collectively recorded over 45,000 new MSMEs registered on various e-commerce platforms, and over 115,000 MSMEs have benefited from the campaign, with total e-commerce sales generated from the campaign at over RM332 million.

On the other hand, the PENJANA Shop Malaysia Online campaign generated over RM896 million in sales that benefitted over 7.8 million consumers and over 210,000 local sellers.

MDEC believes the spillover effects from the increase in digitally-powered businesses would bring new job opportunities for Malaysians whose livelihoods were affected by the pandemic.

“We will continue to accelerate digital transformation and encourage e-commerce adoption among local MSMEs through our eUsahawan and Go-eCommerce programmes, both of which are designed to cultivate digitally-skilled Malaysians and digitally-powered businesses,” Surina added.