By Parliamentary Opposition Leader, DAP Secretary-General and MP for Tanjung, Lim Kit Siang, in Penang on Monday, August 9, 1993:
DAP calls on the Finance Ministry to ensure that the directive that banks give out loans to 5,000 hawkers and petty traders in the next three months benefit hawkers of all races
The Deputy Finance Minister, Datuk Ghani Othman, had announced over the weekend that the Finance Ministry had directed commercial banks to ensure that each of their branches give out loans to five hawkers and petty traders within three months.
He said that three are more than 1,000 bank branches throughout the country and each branch was asked to “adopt” five hawkers and petty traders beginning this month until October.
He said that the directive was among the efforts undertaken by the Finance Ministry so that local banks would speed up the process of providing loans to hawkers and petty traders, and to discourage them from borrowing money from loan sharks.
DAP calls on the Finance Ministry to ensure that the directive that banks give out loans to 5,000 hawkers and petty traders in the next three months benefit hawkers of all races.
DAP will ask in the October meeting of Parliament for a full breakdown of the loans given out to 5,000 hawkers and petty traders under the Finance Ministry’s directive, and whether the loans had been extended to all hawkers and petty traders without regard to race.