By Emmanuel Samarathisa
FOUNDERS of small and medium enterprises (SME) want the government to come clean after discovering that the RM5 bil allocated for the Covid-19 Special Relief Facility (SRF) has been completely exhausted.
A letter provided to FocusM by a few SME owners who were clients of a local bank read: “We have been informed by Bank Negara that the BNM Special Relief Fund total allocated amount of RM5 billion has been fully utilised. Hence we are unable to proceed with your application.”
The SRF was rolled out by BNM under its Fund for SMEs programme to help small companies manage short-term cash flow issues faced by business owners affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.
But the facility is valid from March 6 until Dec 31 this year or until the entire RM5 bil had been depleted, whichever is earlier.
One SME founder said he faced difficulties in applying for the relief. Chiefly, the poor quality of communication from the government as well as banks tasked to deliver the SFR goodies. “No one I know of has received any money from the relief. It’s either in waiting or in the process,” he said.
The founder also said he was told by banks that he had to first “be banking with us” and have “an existing relationship with the bank”, only then could he apply. “So what happens if I’m new or have no relationship with a certain bank?” he asked.
Other SME founders, especially those in the food and beverage (F&B) sector, said that they were told the fund had dried up and they had to wait. “It has been close to 50 days since we went into the movement control order (MCO), we have no cash flow. How are we going to pay for fixed costs?”
They want the government, as well as the Ministry of Finance (MoF), to be transparent and provide a detailed breakdown of the SRF and its beneficiaries “because for now, no one knows,” they said.
Others have also urged the government to top up the SRF. “The key thing here is that we don’t have enough cash reserves on hand when the MCO kicked in,” Toh Yen Kee, founder of The Playground Fitness Studio, told FocusM. As her business is primarily a gym, she had to close during the MCO.
“This led to zero revenue,” Toh said. But she still had to pay salaries and rent. She spends an estimated RM50,000-RM60,000 a month. “I had cash reserves of RM100,000 when the MCO kicked in. Now I’m left with RM20,000, and I may not be able to make rental for May.”
She also said that while her business had received approval to operate under the CMCO, she needed to spend on pre-opening activities such as getting the gym professionally sanitised as well as equipping her coaches with masks and ensuring the gym had sanitisers as well as social distancing markers.
“So, there’s a lot of procedures and they are costly for us,” Toh said. – May 7, 2020
