Samenta national president Datuk William Ng.
PETALING JAYA: The government could use an educate-and-advise approach in implementing the e-invoicing initiative for the first year, says the Small and Medium Enterprises Association (Samenta) as the deadline for implementation on Aug 1 nears.
The association said this based on the findings from its Samenta Annual Survey 2024, which showed that the adoption of digitalisation for most small and medium enterprises (SMEs) is still at a low level.
According to the report, about 72% of the respondents stated that their businesses have yet to be digitalised or are at a basic level of digitalisation.
Samenta national president Datuk William Ng, however, said that even with the majority of SMEs lacking digital capabilities now, they will eventually learn to adapt and be able to utilise e-invoicing effectively.
“That is why instead of calling for postponement or blanket exemption for all SMEs for e-invoicing, we are asking the government to use an educate and advise for the first year of implementation, rather than a catch-and-penalise approach,” Ng said after a talk on the impacts and challenges faced by SMEs and retailers yesterday.
The government will begin to roll out its phased e-invoicing mandate for businesses that generate revenue of more than RM100mil annually.
By July 2025, e-invoicing will be mandatory for all businesses.
Ng said the issue of certain SMEs being slower in adapting to the mandate compared with others and mistakes being made during the invoicing process, must also be considered.
“We should not penalise them simply because they had a slow start and genuine errors can also happen. We are hopeful that the government will look at it reasonably and not penalise SMEs immediately,” he added.
Separately, Ng also noted that a common issue among local SMEs is their tendency to consume innovation, instead of being creators or innovators themselves when it comes to dealing with business challenges.
With the pandemic lockdowns no longer to blame for the margin compression faced by the SMEs, he said the real problems could be that some of them are not focusing on research and development or are not creating their own branding.
“We do not own intellectual property, technological expertise and innovation. So when issues like globalisation and focused migration of business from other countries arise, we find that we have no defence at all.
“If we are concerned about the survival of the economy, especially the retail and trading sectors as well as others, we should somehow start today to create better differentiation in terms of innovation and branding,” he said.
While it may not solve the problem entirely, Ng pointed out that it could be a “good attempt” for local SMEs to restart their journey and step forward in the global supply chain.
Meanwhile, Malaysia Retail Chain Association deputy president Datuk Liew Bin raised the issue of the increasing number of foreign retailers, particularly from China, operating in the country which effects the business of local SMEs.
“I heard there are about 10,000 Chinese retailers in the market, and there are more to come. And this will not only be a challenge for SMEs, but for everybody as well,” he said.
Liew urged the government to take action in stopping the “unfair challenges” posed by foreign retailers, usually in the form of lower prices that set local retailers at a pricing disadvantage.
