‘Can SME Bank be trusted?’

Bagan MP Lim Guan Eng trained his guns at SME Bank after the bank was slapped with an administrative monetary penalty (AMP) by the central bank, Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM).

This is especially so because SME Bank plays a vital role to the micro small medium enterprise (MSME) sector

“Can SME Bank be trusted to look after the MSMEs in Malaysia if they have compliance issues and inadequate staff awareness?

“Whether SME Bank can perform in protecting MSMEs will have national significance when MSMEs contribute 38% to the country’s GDP, generate 48% of jobs and comprise 13% of Malaysia’s exports.

The DAP advisor raised this questions as BNM slapped an AMP amounting to RM460,000 on SME Bank 20 Nov 2025. This was revealed by BNM via a statement on 29 Jan 2026.

The question of trust was raised since the bank has been entrusted with large amount of funds and national initiatives.

“SME Bank had earlier announced that the Federal government has entrusted it to implement nearly RM2 billion in strategic national initiatives to support MSMEs scaling, technology adoption and productivity enhancement across priority sectors.

Lim previously took SME Bank for not playing a pro-active role in aiding the MSMEs.

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