Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin has announced an additional RM10 billion as part of the Prihatin economic stimulus package to aid small and medium enterprises (SME) on top of the RM250 billion already announced before.
New Wage Subsidy Programme:
- Wage subsidy of RM600 per employee for companies with 200 employees.
- Wage subsidy of RM800 per employee for companies with between 76 to 200 employees.
- Wage subsidy of RM1,200 per employee for companies with less than 75 employees.
- Subsidy is for 3 months
- Only for employees with a salary no more than RM4,000
- Employees who receive the wage subsidies must be employed for six months, starting from the 3 months of the Wage Subsidy Programme
- Eligible only for companies registered with SSM, PERKESO, PBT before 1st January 2020
In announcing the initiative today, Muhyiddin said the additional funds will alleviate the financial burden of SMEs and ensure that two-thirds of the country’s employees are still employed.
“I realised that SMEs are core of the country’s economy. This sector contributes to about two-thirds of the jobs in this country and almost 40% to the country’s economy,” he said in a special address.
“Hence, it is important for us to ensure that SMEs can be resilient and sustain themselves while weathering the economic challenges we are facing at this juncture,” he added.
Among the issues, he said, included cash flow problems following the implementation of the Movement Control Order (MCO) as well as red tape in accessing assistance from the government.
“The wage subsidy would benefit 4.8 million workers with a monthly income of RM4,000 and below.
“If there are more than 200 workers in the company, an additional RM600 is allocated per worker (an increase from 100 workers as previously reported),” he said in a special address broadcasted live today.
He said companies with 76 to 200 workers would get a wage subsidy of RM800 for each local employee, while those with 75 workers and less would receive a RM1,200 wage subsidy for each local worker.