00:00In a major breakthrough, the US and China agreed to lower tariffs for 90 days,
00:05easing global trade tensions.
00:07How can Malaysian SMEs leverage this small window of stability?
00:11Here's what Samantha's Dato' William Ong has to say.
00:16Of course, a more stable global trade environment is always good news for us
00:21and for the SMEs in particular.
00:23What it means is that, of course, it's better predictability
00:25and a more stable demand for our exports.
00:27But Malaysian SMEs must also be proactive to really capitalize on this development.
00:32So we must pay attention as much as we can to what is happening around us.
00:36Firstly, diversification is key.
00:38Too many SMEs are still overly reliant on a single market.
00:42Now I think it's a time to explore markets like ASAP and CPTPP,
00:45particularly in ASEAN, Japan and Australia.
00:48Secondly, we must move up the value chain.
00:51Instead of competing on price, we must compete on design,
00:53on quality, on sustainability and, of course, on speed.
00:58This means investing in automation, in our branding
01:00and, of course, in our digital trade platforms.
01:03Thirdly, Malaysian SMEs should embrace supply chain resilience.
01:07That means building multi-country sourcing
01:09and strategic stockpiling to withstand all these future shocks.
01:14Never mind the current one, but more will come
01:16and we must be ready for it.
01:17Finally, and we urge the government to expertise support for trade facilitation
01:23to help us reduce the cost of logistics
01:27and, of course, to ensure that SMEs are prepared
01:29through export readiness program and whatnot.
01:32This is especially so for smaller SMEs that have never exported before.
01:36In summary, while we cannot control the global job politics,
01:40we can definitely control how ready we are for them.
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