Bank Negara to set up funding ecosystem to help SMEs

Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) aims to set up a comprehensive funding ecosystem to meet various financing needs of the small and medium enterprise (SME) sector. BNM director of development finance and enterprise department, Marina Abdul Kahar, said as at end-2015, financial institutions gave out RM274.5bil in loans to 730,000 SMEs. “The financial institutions always give their support as seen in the high fund approval rate of around 80 per cent for SMEs,” she said at the opening of Malayan Banking Bhd’s ‘Building Capacity and Competitiveness of SMEs’ progamme.