Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) wanting to finance their information and communications technology (ICT) implementation are currently faced with a lack of options in terms of loan packages from financial institutions.
Checks by Computimes indicate that although local financial institutions do provide loan packages for buying factory equipment or for working capital, there are hardly any targeted solely for ICT implementation. This is because they have been bundled as a term loan or a hire-purchase package.
Other than the Soft Loan Scheme for Information and Communications Technology by the Malaysian Industrial Development Finance, SMEs do not have many funding options to acquire ICT tools for e-engineering or e-design implementation.
According to Looi Teong Chye, the president of the SMI Association of Malaysia, this is due to financial institutions not being keen to offer such loans to SMEs.
