This amounts to 354,699 enterprises.

Deputy International Trade and Industry Minister Ahmad Maslan said 88% of Bumiputera enterprises were micro businesses, that is, those with no more than five employees and earning less than RM300,000 per year.

He said while Bumiputeras constituted 68% of Malaysia’s population, the community only owned 39.1% of small and medium enterprises (SMEs), from a total of 907,065 business enterprises nationwide.

“Therefore, there is much that needs to be done in the development of BCIC. All ministries have a division in charge of Bumiputera entrepreneurship development, headed by their respective deputy secretary-general.

“I hope that the divisions will be more proactive instead of informing the entrepreneurs of the availability of funds only when the entrepreneurs come to the ministry,” he told the Dewan Rakyat today.

He was responding to a question from Ahmad Hamzah (BN-Jasin), who asked about BCIC’s progress over the past eight years.

Ahmad Maslan said as of January this year, the accumulated overall value of the Bumiputera economy, including the various funding and human capital programmes, stood at RM124.6 billion.

He said based on the 2005-2017 census, the number of Bumiputera SMEs had increased from 35% to 39.1%.

BCIC was established in 2006 in line with the aim of Vision 2020 to create a resilient and competitive Bumiputera community.