【正文】
pite various efforts being introduced to enhance SMEs plaints are abound because the needs of micro enterprises have not been understood and therefore not met. For example, micro enterprises which started as cottage industries seldom have financial documentation to support their financial application and some have limited or no knowledge of the various financial schemes provided by government or financial institutions. Thirdly, the changing global environment has seen a mushrooming of of SMEs in Malaysia. The government has been developing and promoting SMEs but the results have been mixed, partly because policymakers were late in classifying the different needs and characteristics of micro, small and medium enterprises. The developments of diverse and internationally petitive SMEs are central towards achieving sustainable economic growth. SMEs have a key role to play in the wider development agenda, especially in relation to poverty eradication and equitabledevelopment among the various ethnic groups in Malaysia. CGC: Issues and Problems 1. Being a public credit guarantee institution, CGC has capitalized its monopolistic position in the SME financial market. In terms of capitalization and continuous funding, BNM and the financial institutions have always backed it. Without petition, it is able to pletely control the credit guarantee market. This is unhealthy, particularly in terms of an effective check and balance. 2. The usual plaints from the participating banks is that the CGC is slow to process its guarantee covers and that the guarantee fees that it charges are, on the whole, too high. This is on top of the processing fees charged by the banks and CGC (in the case of the DAGS) and the interest payments. 3. CGC’s response to the above is that the guarantee fee it charges is not a burden, considering the fact that it is covering 80% of the risk as pared to the 20% risk carried by the banks. The guarantee fee is one of the sources of ine for CGC. CGC states that this issue needs to be corrected and resolved immediately through a negotiated policy decision. 4. Many SMEs have voiced their grievances on the long bureaucratic time for CGC to arrive at its decisions for the guarantee covers. There have been cases where documents already submitted have either been misplaced or lost. On the issue of delays in processing the loans and guarantees, the CGC states that this is often due to the submission