KUALA LUMPUR: The Securities Commission Malaysia (SC) today unveiled a five-year roadmap to better position the capital market as an attractive and robust source of financing for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) and mid-tier companies (MTC).
The SC chairman Datuk Seri Awang Adek Hussin said the roadmap sets out nine cross-cutting strategies and 36 key initiatives to be undertaken over the short, medium and long-term based on five guiding principles.
The principles include reducing cost of issuance, making requirements more facilitative for fundraising, promoting awareness and capacity building, and widening investor base and access to MSME and MTC.
The 36 key initiatives to be undertaken can broadly be categorised into three approaches, which are regulatory and product innovation, market infrastructure and capacity building.
The roadmap also benefitted from the inputs of the World Bank Group as the technical advisor.
Awang Adek Hussin said the roadmap has the potential to increase these companies financing from capital market up to RM40 billion in 2028.
This target is about seven times the current fundraising levels and represents a 46 per cent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) rate over the next five years.
"If achieved, it will bring us closer to the overall target of 20 per cent of MSME financing to be provided by capital market solutions," he said at the launching ceremony of the roadmap at SC today.
Awang Adek noted that MSME and MTC raised RM6.3 billion via the capital market last year.
According to him, this includes fundraising through the public market, particularly the LEAP and ACE markets, as well as from market segments such as venture capital (VC), private equity (PE), ECF and P2P financing.
"We are confident many more will follow in their footsteps if we have a more structured approach to assist them as envisaged in the roadmap," he said.
The 93-page roadmap entitled "Catalysing MSME And MTC Access to the Capital Market: 5-Year Roadmap (2024-2028)" was launched by Treasury secretary-general Datuk Johan Mahmood Merican on behalf of the Finance Minister II, Datuk Seri Amir Hamzah Azizan.
About 500 people, including senior officials from several ministries, government agencies, government-linked investment companies, regulators, financial institutions, capital market industry players, foreign diplomats as well as MSME and MTC, attended the event.