Dawn of a new beginning? I'm hopeful

Thank you, Encik Musa Hitam!

The timing is right and it is pivotal.

- "Bumi" companies, for their own survival, must start to compete on equal footing with global companies.

- A project of this scale cannot afford anymore Samy-style cracks (verbal and physical) on fly-overs and flooding expressways.

- At a time when Pn Rafidah is wrangling with US technocrats for a bilateral free-trade agreement, this would send a very strong signal to the world that Malaysia is finally ready to grow up (but please follow suit with actions).

- Audit every expenditure and reward for significant individuals and make sure no one, NO ONE, pockets large sums for naught. Pak Lah, time to deliver on promises.

- Consumers/residents/the simple man/woman/child on the street deserve the real deal, please, and finally.

- The journey of a thousand miles (in removing bad policies) begins with one step. It may be easier if that one step proves a success.

Exempt mega Johor project from bumi policy: Musa

(KUALA LUMPUR, 21 March 2007) Malaysia should end a policy favouring the ethnic Malay majority to help attract foreign investment to the US$109 billion development of Johor state, said Musa Hitam, former deputy premier and an adviser on the project. Ethnic Malays, who account for about 60 per cent of the nation's 27 million population, get privileged access to government contracts under a policy to increase their wealth.

Foreign companies investing in Johor should be free to choose which companies are awarded construction orders, Mr Musa said.

'It will have to be on merit,' Mr Musa, deputy prime minister from 1981 to 1986, said in an interview on Monday. 'The Malays will have to face competition. We need to move on. The sooner the better.'

Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi needs funds for a plan to turn Malaysia's southernmost state into an international business and leisure destination. Scrapping the race-based programme will bring in foreign companies and pave the way for the 36-year-old policy to be phased out, some analysts say.

'It would be an exit route, politically,' said Manu Bhaskaran, a Singapore-based partner at economic research company Centennial Group. 'The affirmative action programme and all the related problems do turn off foreign investors.'

Foreign direct investment in Malaysia in 2005 dropped to RM15 billion (S$6.6 billion) from RM17.6 billion in 2004, according to the department of statistics. Last year's figures haven't been released.

A five-member council including Mr Musa and Malaysian billionaire Robert Kuok that's advising the Johor project agrees that the ethnic programme should be dropped, Mr Musa said.

'I am confident that this bumiputera thing, if I may put it this way, need not be the negative factor, and I am stressing this in this particular exercise. There needs to be a revision, updating, of the way we approach it.'

Development of the Southern Johor Economic Region, 2.5 times the size of nearby Singapore, will require RM382 billion from 2006 to 2025, according to Khazanah Nasional, Malaysia's state investment unit, which is leading the project.

Incentives to take part are being finalised, Mr Musa said. Middle Eastern and Japanese investors are among those that have agreed to plough funds into Johor, he said.

The 2,216 square kilometre development will include roads, offices, homes, theme parks, hotels, factories and hospitals and is Malaysia's biggest real-estate project.

The site will generate more than 800,000 jobs in 20 years, Mr Abdullah said in November. It may boost average Johor growth to 7 per cent from 2005 to 2025.

Reaching the project's targets, without the affirmative action programme, would allow the government to remove the policy in other areas, said Mr Bhaskaran. 'This is a very clever way. It shows that at the top ranks of the system, there are people who are thinking well.'

- Bloomberg