Awg Tengah: S’wak govt looking into facilitating registration of home-based businesses

Awang Tengah (centre) Mussen (right) and Ewon pose for a group photo during the SEDCC meeting.

KUCHING (March 7): The Sarawak government is looking into facilitating the registration of home-based businesses in the state, said Deputy Premier Datuk Amar Awang Tengah Ali Hasan.

He said this was to encourage these entrepreneurs to be registered so that they can easily apply for the various assistance provided by the government.

“We are aware that there are businesses here that used their residence as their business address such as those in the cottage industry selling ‘kek lapis’ for instance.

“By right, a house should not be used to operate businesses so we want to fine-tune the details of this matter to determine what kind of businesses can operate from home,” he told a press conference after chairing the Sarawak Entrepreneur Development Coordination Committee (SEDCC)  meeting at the Borneo Convention Centre Kuching (BCCK) here today.

Awang Tengah, who is also International Trade and Investment Minister, said the government through SEDCC will look into this and come up with a comprehensive guideline.

“We will also engage with relevant agencies on this matter,” he added. He said this was one of two proposals suggested during the meeting, with the other being a proposal to establish a Sarawak entrepreneurs database. “The objective of this is to collect data of entrepreneurs comprehensively which can be shared among agencies for planning and implementation of programmes and projects to help businesses of entrepreneurs in the small and medium (SME) industry,” he said.

He said both proposals were agreed in principle during the meeting.

“We will look into the details on what we have to do and this will be discussed by the working committee,” he said. Also present was Deputy Minister of International Trade, Industry, and Investment Datuk Dr Malcolm Mussen Lamoh.