KUALA LUMPUR, March 17 — The Selangor government today launched an RM5 million SME Digital Matching Grant to encourage small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the state to go digital.

The initiative is aimed at helping SMEs accelerate the digitalisation of their business operations to weather the Covid-19 storm.

The Selangor state government is providing a 50 per cent matching grant or a maximum of RM5,000 for SMEs to subscribe to the following digitalisation areas: e-Commerce, human resource and the payroll system as well as cloud accounting, digital marketing, and electronic point of sale system, and payment gateway.

In a statement today, the Selangor Information Technology & Digital Economy Corporation (Sidec) said that the programme is expected to benefit 1,000 Selangor SMEs which are looking to digitalise their businesses.

Sidec is the secretariat of the Selangor SME Digitalisation Matching Grant.

The Selangor SME Digitalisation Matching Grant will be under the purview of the special evaluation committee chaired by the former chief operations officer of the Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC), Datuk Ng Wan Peng. Other committee members comprise of a number of well-known digital economy experts.

"Solution providers that provide digital solutions for SMEs to digitalise their operations are invited to apply to become Digital Service Providers (DSPs) under the Selangor SME Digitalisation Matching Grant,” Sidec said.

The criteria for DSPs include being registered in Selangor, with a paid-up capital of at least RM100,000, and having been in operation for more than three years or successfully deployed digital solutions to at least 100 enterprises.

Sidec said the state government has allocated RM12 million to boost SMEs’ digitalisation and e-commerce in the state since Covid-19 hit.

"The allocations demonstrate the Selangor government’s aggressive digitalisation drive to emerge as South-east Asia’s digital hub,” Sidec added.