Malaysia: Cut Off Subsidies or be Greece

The Federal Government says it will save RM103 billion over the next five years if it starts to cut subsidies now. 

Datuk Seri Idris Jala , who is in charge of the Government Transformation Plan (GTP), said today Malaysia had a whopping RM362 billion debt and must start reducing subsidies amounting to RM74 billion last year to avoid becoming a bankrupt nation by 2019.

“We do not want to end up like Greece,” the minister in the Prime Minister’s Department told a packed hall at the government’s open day to rationalise subsidies here this morning.

But my friend, how about seriously trimming down a bloated civil service, wiping out corruption and preventing wastage at the same time?

So kawan, let us have a more holistic approach to save Malaysia from financial ruin, okay?

Subsidies alone is not the culprit...............

Praise to the 'Sinner' Class

In days of old, tax collectors rank on equal footing as doctors and grave diggers. They were considered as  the ' sinful class' for the jobs they do. Today,except for the grave-diggers,the doctors have become a most favoured worker category and now tax collectors are even exalted and paid bonuses.

This latest accolade to Malaysian tax collectors is sufficient testimony.

" The Inland Revenue Board (IRB) has taken home a RM1mil incentive for winning the Prime Minister’s Innovation Award.

The reward, said Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak, could be used in any way deemed meaningful by the board – including for training purposes or to be given out as bonus.

Najib hoped the award would be a strong encouragement for the department – all the way from the head of department to the lowest level of staff – to want to perform even better.

The Prime Minister presented the award at a ceremony yesterday.

IRB chief executive officer Datuk Hasmah Abdullah said the department had always been negatively perceived by the public, but this would not dampen its determination to keep improving.

“Many people have the common perception that paying taxes is burdening. Our key to innovation is to make tax payment easy and we have done it successfully,” she said after receiving the award from Najib.

Earlier in his speech, Najib said Malaysia had no choice but to be willing to embrace change in this globalised era. The public sector must be able to think out of the box and be creative to bring about development.

“We need to engage new methodology and approach because other countries which were not our competitors before have changed and are competing against us,” he said.

He added that the Government sector had taken a big leap when it introduced the National Key Result Areas and Key Performance Index to ensure that the country was not lagging behind when others were moving forward.

“There must be innovation in the government administration to ensure that its outcome will please and satisfy the rakyat,” he said."

To my mind, the IRB has definitely improved particularly in electronic submissions and tax refunds.

Syabas, IRB!

Mah Sing Turning Magical

Mah Sing Bhd posted a net profit of RM27.9mil in the first quarter ended March 31, 2010, 23.2% higher compared with the same period last year.

In a filing with Bursa Malaysia, the group said its revenue rose 58.5% to RM238.3 in the quarter under review.
It said the result was mainly driven by better performance of its property and plastic divisions.

“Apart from property development, our plastics division also contributed positively to the quarter’s earnings,” it said.

The group achieved strong sales of RM601mil in the first quarter, which is 60% of the full year target of RM1bil.

It said the group would continue its innovative marketing strategies to promote quality properties with good concepts in prime locations.

As at March 31, the group has unbilled sales of about RM1.1bil, giving them significant earnings visibility.

This may be a stock to watch as it is now a potential boutique developer like SP Setia and Sunrise.

Remote Service from the Civil Service

We do hope this is not another motherhood statement. As the saying goes," If wishes were horses, beggars will ride them".

According to the Chief Secretary,the government is working on several initiatives to make public service delivery accessible and mobile for the people.

These include the e-Land system, Local Authority System (ePBT), AgriBazaar, e-Syariah and school management system and many more initiatives which extend into the various sectors -- economic, social, infrastructure and security.

“Mobile government means customers can transact with the government from where they are, not where we, the provider, are,” he said.

“Hence the need for a new kind of technology understanding. A technology and an innovation that can be so simple that people do not even notice they have been served. That, to me, is the ultimate service.”

“It is about getting done what you need done in the simplest, shortest and most efficient manner,” he added.

“If we can do that, at all and every level of our internal and external transactions, using the best that technology and innovation combined can bring, we would have taken public service delivery to a whole new level altogether, not only in Malaysia, but globally setting new benchmarks.”

Sidek said the government has earmarked e-Government as one of the seven flagships of the Multimedia Super Corridor and the use of technology has seeped into among others, human resource management,electronic procurement,bill payment to licence applications and project monitoring system.

He said with increasing cyber attacks and security fears, another entrapment of technology is the rise of protectionism and firewalls.

“As a result, we fall back yet again into the ‘Tragedy of the Commons’. Rampant e-mail bouncing, servers reject mails, legal addresses are seen as spam,” he said.

“All these affect the very thing technology is supposed to effuse which is speed, ease, accessibility and connectivity.”

Sidek said businesses and governments need to face some fundamental questions relating to speed, access, security and privacy as they invest more and more into digitising service, raising access to information and broadening connectivity of societies and communities.

Well,well, well, I think all of these are great but at the same time,let us not forget too the value of a smile when we have to do some counter service. So, those manning these counters must have a ' quick to smile' attitude, don't you agree?

Organics: Are We taken for a Ride?

Consumers who opt for organic foods often believe they are improving their health but there is currently no strong evidence that organics bring nutrition-related health benefits, a new research review finds.

A “disappointingly small” number of well-designed studies have looked at whether organic foods may have health benefits beyond their conventional counterparts, according to the review by researchers with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Health in Britain.

Moreover, they found, what studies have been done have largely focused on short-term effects of organic eating — mainly antioxidant activity in the body — rather than longer-term health outcomes.

Most of the antioxidant studies failed to find differences between organic and conventional diets. The review, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, adds to findings reported last year by the same research team.

In that study, the researchers combed through 162 articles published in the scientific literature over the last 50 years, and found no evidence that organic and conventional foods differ significantly in their nutrient content. For the current review, the researchers were able to find only 12 published studies that met their criteria for evaluating the health effects of organic foods.

“A surprising and important finding of this review is the extremely limited nature of the evidence base on this subject, both in terms of the number and quality of studies,” wrote Dr Alan Dangour and his colleagues.
Research in the area does appear to be increasing, Dangour’s team noted, with 4 of the 12 studies they reviewed published in 2008 or 2009. But in the future, the researchers add, studies -- both in humans and animals — need to be better-designed.

Of the 12 studies the researchers identified, 6 were short-term clinical trials that looked at whether specific organic foods changed markers of antioxidant activity in participants’ blood.

Those trials showed no strong evidence that organic eating boosted antioxidant activity, but the studies were also very limited in scope as they were small — with the largest including 43 men — and lasted no longer than a few weeks. Out of the other 6 studies, one found an association between organic foods and a lower risk of the allergic skin condition eczema among nearly 2,800 Dutch children age 2 or younger.

In that study, parents were surveyed several times about their children’s diet and any episodes of eczema over the first two years of life. Researchers found that children who consumed strictly organic dairy products showed a lower risk of eczema than those consumed conventional dairy foods. However, the study had several key limitations, including its reliance on parents’ reports of eczema and the basic design of the study does not allow for any conclusions about whether children’s consumption of organic dairy was the reason for the lower eczema risk.

While questions remain as to whether organic foods have any extra nutritional value, people buy organic for a number of other reasons as well.

Organic foods are made without the use of conventional pesticides, synthetic fertilizers, antibiotics or hormones — which could potentially reap benefits for people’s health and the environment.

The current review, Dangour and his colleagues point out, did not look for studies on the possible health benefits of reduced exposure to those substances nor did it address the environmental impact of organic food production. — Reuters

Conversations on Competitiveness

Let us read this discourse in mysinchemw.com yesterday. It gives us an idea what competitiveness is, how to be so and what is a competitiveness ranking actually would mean to a nation and its people.

MAY 24 —  Dear Tay, 
 
It is said that Malaysia has been ranked 10th place in a world’s competitiveness report.
I would like to ask how many countries have been included in the list. Are there more than 10 countries? 

Perhaps, it is a conspiracy of foreigners to make us feel “Malaysia Boleh”? 

And what is actually the so-called competitiveness?
Regards, 

Reader Ah Bang

Dear Ah Bang,

First of all, I think you are spoiling the joy!

Malaysia has not been receiving good news for long. Even the 2010 Thomas Cup cheered us for only one day.

But now, we have been ranked among the top 10 most competitive countries in the world. Oh, this is not a corruption, largest rice dumpling or longest sarong ranking. Instead, it is a competitiveness ranking!

And certainly, more than 10 countries have been assessed. In fact, I have checked the data and found a total of 58 countries and regions have been assessed. The ranking is limited to “top students” only!

Malaysia can actually be ranked among the top 10 countries, including Singapore, Hong Kong, the United States, Australia, Switzerland, Canada and Taiwan. Even though we are ranked the bottom in the top 10 list, we are still in the “gifted class”! Have you been in a gifted class before?

Moreover, the ranking was conducted by the International Institute for Management Development (IMD), an internationally-renowned management institution.

I do not think it is a conspiracy either as IMD does not receive money.

Okay, I do agree that I am not sure why Malaysia is competitive and how it can be ranked among the top 10 competitive countries.

However, I have read a book, a very thick book, written by Harvard Business School Professor Michael Porter. He pointed out a few concepts in the book.

1. Do what you know how to do and what you can do well. That is what we called competitive advantage;
2. Open up, so that talents, capital and information will come to you;
3. Innovate, keep reforming and developing to stay ahead;
4. The government, as well as the people must be efficient.

Porter’s competitiveness theory used to be popular in the world. Many countries invited him to be their honoured national advisor by offering him a minimum pay of millions of dollars.

However, he stopped making new arguments later. His market and status dropped and recently, he was paid US$250,000 (RM800,000) to give a talk in Taiwan. It was only an ordinary talk on the co-operation between China and Taiwan.

He himself has actually portrayed the competitiveness concept, namely one will fall behind if he does not move forward. Malaysia is ranked among the top 10 today but how about next year and the year after next?

The initial purpose of the IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook is to help us understand how a country could enhance its social progress by using its overall resources and competitive conditions.
The question is, what kind of progress do we need?

Some countries need to get rid of poverty while some countries that have already gotten rid of poverty are facing the pain of growing gap between rich and poor, as well as unfairness and injustice in the society.
To be honest, I am really happy to see Malaysia being ranked among the top 10.

It shows that we have our merits. However, we must be careful as we may fall from the gifted class to the low-grade class if we excessively indulge in the competitiveness ranking while ignoring and not improving problems that we have been facing for long.

So, are we more enlightened now?

Humanity and the Law

I think we must practice humanity in whatever we do. As such laws, particularly statutory law should reflect such values as it shows truly a society that is civilized, matured and developed.

The Bar Council' request for  witnesses  to be accorded the same rights as the accused is worthy of mention and the MACC's directive that investigations be carried only during office hours is i nth right direction.

Let us read the following news item.

"The Bar Council has called on the Government to give witnesses the same rights as accused persons.
Its chairman Ragunath Kesavan said witnesses who help enforcement agencies in investigations should be given the same protection and rights as the accused.

“Those accused have the right to be allowed adequate rest which is guaranteed by Rule 20 of the Lockup Rules 1953,” he said in a statement yesterday.

Ragunath was commenting on the recent Federal Court decision in the Tan Boon Wah case where it was held that the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) could continue to interrogate witnesses beyond office hours.

Ragunath said the decision bore testament that the courts had failed in playing their role as the arbiter of disputes between individuals and the state while serving as a checks-and-balance mechanism.

He added that the decision permitted the MACC to compel witnesses to be questioned, including for long periods of time, with no option for them to decline.

He urged the Government to take immediate steps to protect the rights of witnesses and promote transparent and accountable investigations.

Meanwhile, he welcomed MACC chief commissioner Datuk Seri Abu Kassim Mohamed’s statement that MACC officers had been directed to conduct their investigations during office hours."

A big salute to the Bar Council and MACC.

It was also stated that the officers would have to provide justification for “taking evidence after office hours”.