Sustainability assurance Malaysia has been pushed back a year: mandatory independent assurance now starts in 2028, 2029 and 2030 for Groups 1, 2 and 3 respectively, instead of 2027, 2028 and 2029. The Securities Commission announced the deferral in September 2026 after a review by the Minority Shareholders Watch Group...
MOTAC AI Tourism: Small Operators Told To Adopt
The MOTAC AI tourism call went out to the smallest operators in the country: homestays and village-level community tourism groups, not hotel chains. The Tourism, Arts and Culture Ministry framed this year's World Tourism Day celebrations around "Digital Agenda and Artificial Intelligence to Redesign Tourism", running 28 September to 2...
Minimum Wage Malaysia: 95.8% Of Surveyed SMEs Want Delay
95.8% of 333 businesses surveyed by the SME Association of Malaysia want the minimum wage Malaysia review delayed, with a phased implementation if the government proceeds anyway - the central finding of the association's quick survey, released on 2 October 2026. Nearly half of respondents oppose raising the floor from...
Malaysia Vietnam Trade: RM92 Billion And Climbing
Malaysia Vietnam trade reached RM92 billion in 2025, and Malaysia is now courting Vietnamese manufacturers rather than waiting for them. Consul General of Malaysia in Ho Chi Minh City Firdauz Othman told the "CEO Forum - Doing Business With Malaysia" on 1 October 2026 that Malaysian supply chains, green manufacturing...
Labuan Service Tax: SMEs Seek Section 48 Relief
Labuan service tax relief is again on the table, and the island's SME association wants it settled in Budget 2027. The Small and Medium Enterprises Association of Labuan, led by president Jefery Tan, called on 2 October 2026 for the Section 48 service tax exemption to be applied to services...
International Healthcare Week 2027: Malaysia’s Export Push
International Healthcare Week 2027 will run from 13 to 15 July at MITEC in Kuala Lumpur, a MATRADE-partnered event designed to plug Malaysian exporters and MSMEs into global healthcare supply chains, the organisers announced on 1 October 2026. The timing is not accidental: Malaysia's private healthcare market is projected to...
E-Commerce Act Malaysia: SMEs Demand Enforcement
Malaysia is rewriting the E-Commerce Act Malaysia has operated under since 2006, and the two associations representing the country's SMEs and retail chains say the rewrite means nothing without enforcement. The SME Association of Malaysia and the Malaysia Retail Chain Association told a joint press conference on 2 October 2026...
E-Invoicing Malaysia: 268,000 Taxpayers, 1.99 Billion Invoices
E-invoicing Malaysia has passed its biggest milestone yet: more than 268,000 taxpayers have submitted 1.99 billion e-invoices as at 1 October 2026, Inland Revenue Board chief executive Datuk Dr Abu Tariq Jamaluddin said at the launch of Bulan HASIL 2026 in Putrajaya. 196,031 of those taxpayers came in under phase...
Budget 2027 Malaysia: SMEs Want Outcomes, Not Allocations
Budget 2027 Malaysia will be tabled on 9 October, and the SME Association of Malaysia has one central demand: stop measuring SME support by the size of the allocation, and start measuring whether it changes anything. National president Dr Chin Chee Seong told a press conference on 2 October that...
Smart Factory Malaysia: Only 93 Of 3,000 Target Built
Deputy Investment, Trade and Industry Minister Sim Tze Tzin put both numbers in the same sentence in George Town on 2 October 2026, and smart factory Malaysia progress is the story of the gap between them: 93 manufacturers have been recognised as transformed, against a national target of 3,000 by...