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The purpose of this paper is to improve the socio-economic condition of low-income households in Malaysia, many products and services are available, including access to working capital and enterprise development training programs. This study examined the impact of access to working capital and micro-enterprise development training programs on household income and economic vulnerability among participants of development initiatives in the eKasih (national poverty data bank) in Peninsular Malaysia.

Adopting a cross-sectional design, the authors collected data randomly from the selected 300 micro-entrepreneurs from the list of development organizations available in the eKasih (national poverty data bank) located in four states of Peninsular Malaysia. Quantitative data were collected through structured interviews with the respondents from October to November 2017.

Both the length of participation and total amount of economic loan were found to increase the household income. However, there was no positive and significant impact of total number of training hours on household income. Interestingly, length of participation was found to reduce the level of economic vulnerability, except total amount of economic loan, and total number of training hours.

Despite the overwhelming empirical evidence, the findings indicated that the impact of enterprise development training programs was inconclusive. The effect of total amount of loan on economic vulnerability was also inconclusive. Hence, both policy makers and development organizations should understand how their programs benefit the poor households that can be improved through new implementation strategies.

This study aims to investigate the impact of economic vulnerability upon entrepreneurial competencies (i.e. commitment competency, conceptual competency, opportunity recognition competency, organizing competency, relationship competency and strategic competency) among respondents from varied development initiatives established by the eKasih program (National Poverty Data Bank) in Peninsular Malaysia.

Upon adopting the cross-sectional design, data were randomly gathered from selected 300 micro-entrepreneurs from the list of development organizations available in the eKasih (National Poverty Data Bank), located at four states in Peninsular Malaysia. The quantitative data were gathered by performing structured interview sessions from September until November 2017.

The outcomes of the study displayed that economic vulnerability has a significantly negative effect upon commitment, opportunity recognition, organizing and strategic competency. On the other hand, the results showcased that economi c vulnerability has a significantly positive effect on competency, but insignificantly positive impact upon conceptual competency.

These study outcomes appear to extend the scope of the resource-based view, apart from enriching the existing entrepreneurial competency literature, particularly within the Malaysian context. Hence, it is recommended that the government of Malaysia and development organizations should focus on maximizing the level of competency among micro-entrepreneurs as a viable approach to decrease the effect of economic vulnerability.