Wee: Exciting, challenging first 100 days in PM's dept

KUALA LUMPUR: For Datuk Wee Ka Seong, his first 100 days as a Minister in the Prime Minister's Department has been nothing but exciting and challenging.
"My portfolio is handling issues related to Chinese community new villages, small medium enterprise (SME) and SME micro-credit. All these are very exciting and challenging areas," hetold theSun in an exclusive interview.
For the former Deputy Education Minister (2008 - 2013), this new portfolio is something different which he is set to master and handle efficiently.
"A new ministry, a new portfolio, and of a new type of challenge as I have to focus on the economics and development as well as the social part of new village," said Wee.
He is enjoying his new job for the simple reason that it is a good transformation programme for him to learn an entirely different job scope, especially the SME.
Wee described the SME as something close to the Chinese community although the SME programme need not have to be Chinese centric.
"If the government wants to help SMEs, then it would be done as whole, irrespective of race, although the majority in the business are Chinese," he added.
Wee's main task, when he was entrusted with the portfolio, was to oversee the development of the Chinese SMEs and for that he had set up the Secretariat for the Advancement of Malaysian Entrepreneurs (SAME) whose main aim was to act as a one-stop information dissemination for ministries as well as government agencies and local trade associations.
The idea is to get local entrepreneurs to embrace innovative technology to reduce foreign labour and be competitive and export oriented globally.
The secretariat currently has a chief executive officer and will become fully functional early next year with the appointment of the 10-member advisory board representing various industries.
Q: Why is it important to have a secretariat?
A: It is to help the SMEs and also change public perception towards government programmes. It is also to engage with the SMEs from time to time to understand their problems and find solutions. It will also organise events for SMEs nationwide to participate and interact.
Q: What is your long term plan to help the SMEs?
A: We will foster a closer working relationship with other relevant agencies such as SMECorp for the SMEs growth and development so that they too can contribute substantially towards the nation's gross domestic product (GDP) from the current 33.1% to 41% by 2020. For this to happen a lot of work needs to be done.

Q: What are the challenges faced by SMEs?
A: Hike in the operational costs... and now the impact of the goods and services tax (GST) besides that of the minimum wage implementation. Therefore SMEs wants to employ foreign workers to reduce their daily operational costs and hope the government can assist them in this respect besides providing financial assistance. If their request are met, then they are in a better position to compete with bigger companies and corporations.
Q: What are the financing problems SMEs are facing?
A: Well, SMEs require loans to expand their business, but unfortunately they cannot get the loans from commercial banks due to insufficient collateral. Therefore, some form of mechanism, like the current micro-credit scheme, needs to be put in place to assist these SMEs. Once the financial woes are resolved they will be in a better position to compete.