MEDAC assists Young Entrepreneurs & Womens Empowerment

According to minister Datuk Ewon Benedick, the organizations which are under the Entrepreneur Development and Cooperatives Ministry (MEDAC) have offered several financing initiatives which assist and help women and young entrepreneurs to start and grow their businesses.

He said that last year almost 73,073 young entrepreneurs and women were a part of the National Entrepreneurial Group Economic Fund (TEKUN) program which received RM1.1 billion from the fund itself.

This year, through the Skim Pembiayaan Online TEKUN (SPOT) the entrepreneurs who do business online, TEKUN has launched a special financing program without collateral.

This initiative is open to all genders and age groups. 118 women and young entrepreneurs have obtained SPOT financing involving an allocation of RM884,000 by 10 February.

Minister Datuk further replied to a question asked by Siti Mastura Muhammad (PN-Kepala Batas) regarding the special assistance scheme for beginners without collateral to support women and young entrepreneurs to start their businesses.

He also stated about the SME Corp that is also assisting in capacity development in the form of training to the youth of Bhumiputera between the ages of 18 and 30 for their startup grants without collateral and advisory services, and RM1 million has been provided under the planning of the Tunas Usahawan Belia Bhumiputera (TUBE) program in the current year.

About 436 of the 915 youths who participated in the program were female. There are other firms such as Amanah Ikhtiar Malaysia, who offer unsecured financing for potential women entrepreneurs who are under 40 and with low incomes to start a business, such as Skim Pembiayaan Ikhtiar (SPI) I-Mesra and Skim Pembiayaan Ikhtiar (SPI) I-Muda. Bank Rakyat also provides a program called BizLady program to assist women entrepreneurs without collateral.