Agrobank Honours Seven (7) Agropreneurs At Agrobank Agropreneur Award 2016

KUALA LUMPUR – Seven (7) entrepreneurs were named awardees of the inaugural Agrobank Agropreneurs Awards 2016 at an event held at Sheraton Imperial Hotel today. YB Dato’ Sri Ahmad Shabery Cheek, Minister of Agriculture and Agro-based Industry presented the awards and it was witnessed by more than 220 attendees of the event. The event was held in conjunction with Agrobank’s 47th year anniversary.

The Awards aims to recognise outstanding and successful Agrobank’s clients in various categories. According to Tan Sri Mohamad Zabidi Zainal, Chairman of Agrobank, among the objectives of the Awards are to highlight successful agropreneurs* who can be icons or models for other entrepreneurs of the industry and encourage more entrepreneurs to build agro-based business. “Agrobank is proud with the achievement of agropreneurs who work hard to improve their businesses/projects from subsistence level to commercial and export levels.

Agriculture has always been an important economic growth for Malaysia. Since its establishment in 1969, Agrobank has been supporting the ambitions of many agropreneurs to build their business empires and providing job opportunities to thousands of people. Many entrepreneurs has benefitted from the financing, products and services from Agrobank,” said Tan Sri Mohamad Zabidi.

During his speech, Tan Sri Mohamad Zabidi also highlighted that the prospects and outlook for agriculture is good. “For the first half of year 2016, Agrobank has recorded impressive achievement the highest financing value with RM8.06 billion.
60.79% (4.90 billion) of the total is financing for primary agricultural sector and
Which is 60.61% (RM2.97 billion) is financing in the agro-food segment. The funding growth for the first half of the year is 8.29% compared to the same period last year. This is a commendable achievement particularly in current global economic condition,” added Tan Sri Mohamad Zabidi.

There are seven (7) categories of the awards; which are the Excellent Agropreneur Award, Innovative Agropreneur Award, Young Agropreneur Award, Woman Agropreneur Award, Loyal Customer Award (individual and Company) and Micro Agropreneur Award. The award recipients brought home trophies, certificates and cash prizes amounting to RM110,000.00.
The assessment of award winners was based on the instruments developed by the Malaysia Productivity Corporation (MPC). The instrument is widely used by international awards organiser. There are seven areas of assessment; Leadership, Business Plan, Information, Process, Human Resource, Customers and Growth.

*Agropreneurs refers to entrepreneurs in agribusiness; either in the upstream or downstream activities in agriculture.