PETALING JAYA – Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the country are facing lower profit margins despite an uptick in the economy as they are forced to decline large orders due to an ongoing labour crunch.
SME Association of Malaysia (SME Malaysia) National President Ding Hong Sing explained that besides higher costs of production arising from pricier raw materials and supply chain and logistic issues, companies were now grappling with lower operational capacity.
“SME Malaysia hopes the relevant authorities can simplify the foreign worker application process and expedite the approval of applications to support industry workforce requirements,” he said.
He warned that the current shortage of workers would affect business productivity and hamper SME business recovery, post Covid-19.
Ding was speaking at the official launch of the Platinum Business Awards (PBA) 2022 at a leading hotel here on June 28, officiated by Minister of Entrepreneur Development and Cooperatives Tan Sri Noh bin Haji Omar.
PBA 2022 is a local premium awards platform to benchmark the business performance and quality standards of SMEs and individuals in 18 award categories by nomination and 4 categories by invitation.
Four new categories – SME Environmental, Social, and Governance Adoption Award, SME IR 4.0 Adoption Award, SME Business Resilience Award, and SME Sustainable Development Goals Excellence Award – have been introduced to highlight the growing relevance of ESG, sustainability, and the Industrial Revolution 4.0 to SMEs.
Award nominees undergo a robust assessment process which includes auditor site visits, culminating in the selection of winners by a Selection Board chaired by Tan Sri Michael Yeoh, President of KSI Strategic Institute for Asia Pacific, joined by other captains of industry.
PBA2022 is organised by SME Malaysia and audited by SFAI Malaysia, with Fusionex as technology partner and Skynet Worldwide as the official courier.
Major event sponsors are Hong Leong Bank, Boost Biz, Maxis and RHB Bank while co-sponsors are AmLeisure Group, Ipay 88, SBH and RAM.
PBA2022 is now open for nominations until August 31 2022. Details are available at https://smemalaysia.org/pba and the awards secretariat at 03-8024 5787 (Cynthia).
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