Abstract:

The so-called Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak has been declared as a global health disruption, and at the same time affecting the global economy. As the phenomena are unprecedented, there is a lack of studies on the impact of COVID-19 on businesses, especially in Malaysia. For preventing the virus transmission to the plethora of people, the Malaysian government declared Movement Control Order (MCO) on 18 March 2020 in which the citizens are ordered to practice‘social distancing’ to avoid further outbreak of COVID-19. Therefore,  the study aims to identify the impact of COVID-19 transmission on SME businesses in Malaysia. For data collection, this study employed an online survey system using a self-administered questionnaire that was distributed all over the country through social media. Findings indicated that the spreading of of COVID-19 in Malaysia has significant impacts on SME business, which affected almost 87% of business owners in the study. Two factors that have led business owners to face loss of profitare they bear debts to suppliers due to  destroys to their goods and their inability to conduct sales  and consequently their business cannot operate due to lack of stocks. Only 13% of business owners in this study are not affected as they have an online business. Some of them already have an online store before the MCO execution, and some of the respondents’ online store are only setup during the pandemic. The findings reveal that 76% are affected by the COVID-19 outbreak as they need to shut down their business during MCO. The remaining of the respondents are still operating their business as they are of the 'food and beverage' sector. The study aims to enrich the discourse on Small-Medium Enterprise (SME) businesses by assisting SME stakeholders including government, policymakers, and business owners to reflect on their business plans and strategies.