Aid package timely but falls short for businesses, say manufacturers' group

 

The RM40 billion Pemerkasa Plus aid package is timely but falls short of the business sector’s expectations, Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers (FMM) president Soh Thian Lai said.

In a statement today, he said the industry, in particular, welcomed the extension of the Wage Subsidy Programme, three-month automatic loan moratorium or 50 percent reduction of loan instalment repayment as well as additional RM2 billion allocated for the Targeted Relief and Recovery Facilities by Bank Negara Malaysia for small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

He said the industry also lauded the initiative to increase the vaccination rate to 150,000 per day by June 2021 and hoped that the government would accelerate the mass immunisation programme through a parallel programme by private hospitals and clinics and the vaccination for the economic sectors to achieve faster herd immunity.

“Unfortunately, the assistance and initiatives announced have fallen short of the business sector’s expectations and requests on direct assistance to industries that are impacted by the full movement control order (MCO), especially those that are unable to operate during this period,” he said.

He said this MCO is more stringent and has a far greater impact than the previous MCOs as businesses have not recovered from the earlier impact of the previous lockdowns and their financial reserves, especially for SMEs, have been depleted over the past year.

Soh said in particular, the industry called on the government to urgently include several assistance/initiatives including the extension of automatic loan moratorium to all businesses impacted by the lockdown regardless of size, and expansion of the Temporary Measures for Reducing the Impact of Covid-19 Act to provide for relief for manufacturing and other manufacturing-related services such as trading or distributorship and logistics which are currently not included.

“(We also seek a) waiver of Tenaga Nasional Bhd’s maximum demand charge for May 2021 given that industries have already been on a reduced workforce of 60 percent from May 25, 2021, and the period of lockdown just announced which could possibly be from June to July 2021,” he said.

He said FMM also called for the government to permit the movement of all containerised and sealed import and export cargo to and from ports and airports as well as manufacturing warehouses.

“Failure to allow companies to clear import shipments from ports and export shipments from factory warehouses to meet shipment deadlines will lead to port and airport congestion similar to MCO 1.0,” he said.

Soh added that the government must also allow industries to undertake maintenance of plants during this period with 20 percent workforce capacity instead of only 10 percent, which “is not practical” to carry out warm idle activities for 24/7 operation companies.

- Bernama