Credit : Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim's X
KUALA LUMPUR, November 3 – Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim has described hawkers and small traders as an important part of the pulse of Malaysia’s economy, saying Budget 2027 gives attention to helping the community grow and become more competitive.
In a post on his X account on Sunday (November 1), Anwar said hawkers and small traders not only provide goods and services for daily needs, but are also a source of livelihood for thousands of families and keep local economies alive.
He said Budget 2027 focuses on widening access to financing, speeding up digitalisation and raising skills so that the community can continue to grow and compete.
“This is among the commitments of the Waad Nasional, to make sure the country’s progress is felt down to the grassroots,” he wrote, in line with the spirit of “reaching for the sky, rooted to the earth”.
As further support, the Prime Minister said he had also announced an allocation to the Ministry of Entrepreneur and Cooperatives Development (KUSKOP), to be coordinated to help associations of hawkers and small traders.
He said he hoped the support would strengthen the role of these associations in looking after the welfare of their members and in helping hawkers and small traders keep growing.
“Insya-Allah, we will keep working to build a fair and prosperous nation, with opportunities and progress that can be enjoyed by all levels of society,” Anwar said.
Anwar has often said that the benefits of economic growth must reach ordinary Malaysians, including small business owners, rather than remain concentrated at the top. His post linked Budget 2027 measures to that goal of spreading prosperity more evenly.
He did not set out in the post how the allocation to KUSKOP would be divided among the associations, or when the support would be channelled to them.
Hawkers and small traders form a large part of Malaysia’s micro-enterprise sector, which covers food stalls, night markets, roadside sellers and other small family businesses across the country.
Photographs shared with the post showed the Prime Minister meeting traders and visitors at food stalls, including greeting a young boy at one of the stalls.
Anwar has made support for small businesses a recurring theme in recent weeks. During a visit to Kelantan, he launched a scheme to help small entrepreneurs there under the Usahawan Bangkit initiative.
The Prime Minister has also visited communities in several states in recent days, including Kelantan, where he met traders, residents and religious leaders, and spoke about the government’s plans under the MADANI agenda.
He said the support from the government would help hawkers and small traders “continue to grow”, and described the associations as playing a key role in safeguarding the welfare of their members. In the original Malay post, he called the community part of the “denyut nadi ekonomi negara”, or the pulse of the national economy.
Anwar’s post was written in Malay and shared with four photographs from the event. He ended it by restating his hope that progress and opportunity would be enjoyed by all levels of society, and that hawkers and small traders would continue to grow alongside the wider economy.
The post carried the hashtags #MalaysiaMADANI and #YakinMADANI.
Source: Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim on X
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