KUALA LUMPUR, June 17 — The total small and medium enterprise (SME) soft loan fund approved by local banks and accepted by SMEs amounted to RM12.12 billion as at June 4, Finance Minister Datuk Seri Tengku Zafrul Abdul Aziz said.

He said the soft loan fund operated by Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) would benefit 25,680 SMEs.

"The amount includes Special Relief Facility (SRF), Automation and Digitization Facility (ADF), All-Economic Sector Facility (AES), and Agrofood Facility (AF) funds.

"Even though the SRF fund has been fully utilised, SMEs can still apply for financing schemes that are still available through the BNM Fund such as ADF, AES, and AF," he said when presenting the 57th National Inter-Agency Economic Stimulus Implementation and Coordination Unit (Laksana) report today.

Tengku Zafrul said as at June 4, a total of RM67.5 million had been channelled to 13,869 businesses in the form of grants and loans for subscription of digitalization services.

For the financing of the Penjana tourism sector, he said the government had allocated RM600 million for SMEs and micro-SMEs that were still affected by Covid-19.

"As at June 4, there were 666 applications for this funding, and out of the total, 327 applications have been approved with a total funding of RM65.1 million," he said.

Meanwhile, a total of RM421.2 million was channelled in the same period to 12,667 Micro SMEs, including in the retail and services sectors, he added. — Bernama