Minister: SMEs to benefit most from fee cut

SMALL and medium enterprises (SMEs) stand to benefit most from the government's 15 per cent discount of fees to incorporate new companies, whose authorised share capital is less than RM1 million.


The reduction of fees, through the Companies Commission of Malaysia (SSM), is effective from April 1 to December 31 2010.

Domestic Trade, Cooperative and Consumerism Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob said SMEs make up 95 per cent of the average 40,000 new companies that registered with SSM per year.

"The objective of reducing the fees by 15 per cent is to encourage the formation of SMEs to participate in various business opportunities, pursuant to the government's RM67 billion economic stimulus packages," he said after visiting SSM's single counter interaction located at its new premises in KL Sentral, Kuala Lumpur yesterday.
 
"Although the government would lose some RM19 million in revenue from this reduction of incorporation fees, we want to help the SMEs grow their business and grab the opportunities available from the government's economic stiumulus packages," he said.


With the discount, a company whose authorised share capital is below RM100,000, for example, pays only RM850 for new registration compared with RM1,000 previously.

Ismail Sabri said in the past three years, SSM has identified about 95 per cent of new companies incorporated falls under the category of companies with an authorised share capital of less than RM1 million.

"This statistic has a strong correlation with the total percentage of SMEs, which constitute 99.2 per cent of total companies in the country.

"SSM's focus on the SMEs augurs well with the nation's aspiration to increase the formation of new companies and in recognition of the fact that SMEs provide employment for about 56 per cent of the total workforce and contributes 37 per cent to the country's gross domestic product," he said.
In conjunction with yesterday's visit, Ismail Sabri also announced several reform initiatives carried out by SSM towards facilitating the conduct of doing business in Malaysia.


The reform initiatives, which cover a broad range of aspects involving procedures, duration and costs involved in starting a business,were introduced on April 1.
Sources: Business Times