Only 4 countries in the World have GLCs being Russia, China, Singapore and Malaysia. Only Malaysia is democratic whilst the others are authoritarian. No Western democracy has GLCs because of the firm belief that the business of making money should be left to the private sector and the avoidance of corruption. Here is the genesis of the GLCs. I was there. After the separation of Singapore from Malaysia, the Adviser to the Singapore Government, UN economics expert Dr Alfred Winsemius advised the establishment of the Jurong Industrial Park. By 1970, Starlite Ceramics, Fair Lady, Regency Hair Wigs, Eupoc, and many others failed because the Singapore traders were different from industrailists. . Many Malay workers were employed there. To fill the void, the Singapore Government turned its monopolies into businesses like NOL, SIA, DBS, Keppel, Sembawang, Far East Levingston etc. Being monopolies, all were profitable by the early 1980s. Lee Kuan Yew coined these businesses Government linked companies or GLCs -the only such enterprise in the World. In 1982, Deng Xiao Peng thought he had found the answer in the GLCs in turning Communism into Capitalism. So did Russia.. Both found out to their cost that corruption affecting the GLCs in Russia and China were rampant. With 100 Chinese on the run ! Unlike tidy Singapore where a phone call by Lee Kuan Yew will reveal all, Russia and China are vast lands which are difficult to control. In Malaysia, unwittingly, my 1972 Concept to capture Sime Darby PLC for the Malays to fast track into big business without impinging on Chinese business, was supported by the Prime Minister Tun Abdul Razak. The Concept was to own more British light engineering companies and move Malaysia upwards. Unfortunately, Tun Abdul Razak died. The World's first GLC, Sime Darby reverted to a trading company selling goods for others to this day. Sime Darby was bankrupted twice by the same Management at RM 1.20 billion in 1997 and RM 2.10 billion in 2010. No one was charged. No one was jailed. The shenanigans in Sime Darby set a bad example to the over 300+ GLCs to come. All have no owners, off Government Budget and most losing money. An ex Minister of Finance told me he closed down 1,800 GLCs in the 1980s ! The official debt of Malaysia is RM 1.3 trillion without the GLCS debts. The GLCs will kill us all.
Islam Madani will not stop the rot. It is too far gone because every Malay political elite is badly tainted. Replacing corrupt heads will only be the opportunity for aspiring greedy tag ons to take over and propagate the rot. The system set up over 60 years by political war lords has ensured that this unique Malay system will not disappear. This system ensures guaranteed financial and worldly success without stress for Malay political elites and their hangers on. So why should they give up on it?
All GLCs everywhere kills off small and medium size businesses and has no relevance and when in Malaysia, it gives rise to corruption bundled with the usual race and religious rhetoric. And putting politicians on board increases likelihood of extreme corruption and now it is coming home to roost. Well done Malaysia. Stupid affirmative actions from Tun till today is the root cause. It will never change.
We need to support online commerce.theres 10mil malay accounts on shoppee alone. They are reversing the trend from being consumer to producer of wealth.
The malays sells products and the chinese buy them.On shoppee.
The cash now flows from a chinese account into a malay account.
It never ceases to amaze how in places like Malaysia and Singapore, the old colonial measures of success and failure is measured in terms of European standards and their preferential treatment to stereotypes they created and left behind in the minds of local and foreign observers alike.
A success is inevitably measured by a Chinese example (especially in economic terms) a failure distinctively Malay. Yet no one gives consideration to the enormity of the transformation of the Malays into an economically successful community over the years with the help of Dr. Mahathir's policy and affirmative action policies.
Instead we get a fairy tale example of the Singapore model which conveniently covers their monumental failures like the Temasek Sovereign and pension Funds nearly US$100 billon losses in 2007-2008 from very myopic investment decisions approved by Lee Hsien Loong's wife the Yale 'Genius'. Lee Kuan Yews insensitive remark that "workers will have to work longer and harder and put of retirement was cold comfort to those suffering because of his daughter in law's failures.
Ho Jing was cautioned by the former BHP CEO Chip Goodyear who had been earlier recruited to head Temasek. There were personality clashes between the two. But Goodyear's superior intellect and business acumen did not count for anything.
Goodyear warned hHo Jing against throwing money into an already overheated banking sector. She thumbed her noses at him and the GFC came and wiped the smile off her face. A Chinese "success story".
The media was complicit in hiding the story as it did not fit the stereotypes. There was a spate of Singaporean corporates failures in the following year, many because of accounting fraud and concealment of of losses and padding of revenues and profits. A staple of South East Asia's Chinese. Malaysia is a perfect showcase for these examples.
In Malaysia however, thee Malays of the upper classes tend to willingly and blindly take on Chinese business partners in the vain belief that these partners will wave a magic wand like they did smuggling opium in earlier times like the Haw Par Tiger Balm family had done mixing their pharmaceutical profits with opium and heroin profits to launder the illicit profits of opium and its derivatives.
The celebrated case of Khoo Teck Phuat a man trusted by the Sultan of Brunei who trusted the magician race by allowing Khoo to invest his billions. Not long after in the aftermath of the National Bank of Brunei collapse did the Sultan realize what was happening to him and his wealth in the hands of these "successful" Chinese businessmen. Khoo had been robbing him blind. Unable to arrest Khoo the Sultan arrested his son David who was still in Brunei and jailed him for being an accessory to his fathers sins.
Not satisfied with that failure with Khoo, the Sultan's brother Prince Jeffrey had entered into partnerships and associations with Malaysian Chinese and Singaporean Chinese businessmen costing him and his government over US$9 billion.
By contrast- Daim Zainuddin, the Tun Razak family and a host of other Malay businessmen succeeded beyond a Chinaman's wildest dreams. They did it lawfully and with the same patronage of government and bumi putera's that the Chinese secured for their successes.
Back to the main game, no country in the world has been spared the impact of a looming world wide recession bordering in some places as a depression. The all mighty and powerful USA and China its nemesis today face an economic downturn of herculean proportions.
Germany is already in recession. Britain is a basket case as are Portugal and Spain. The road goes ever on.
Malaysia's economic woes are not an exception but the rule of the economic woes of the world at this time.
Sir, With the arrival of Covid 19, the Ukraine War, US-China tensions, more World turbulence etc, the glittering revenues for Singapore disappeared after March 2020 and the carefully crafted Lee Kuan Yew Legacy for Singapore's survival destroyed. Man proposes. God disposes. In her desperation, Singapore cosy up to China and forgot who made Singapore great. Hence, for the very first time, democrat Washington Post blasted Singapore with an article on 'Lianhe Zaobao and China.' In her heyday, Lee Kuan Yew would be sitting next to his democrat President buddy soon after a Presidential election. Now Prime Minister of India Modi takes precedence. Singapore only welcomed the US Vice President for only 2 days with no orchid named after her. Singapore's rebuttal on Washington Post's attack sounded arrogant and forgot who made Singapore great ! Sad !
A SUGGESTION ON HOW TO CALM MALAYSIA FLAILING GLCs AND A QUICK LOOK AT IT'S ECONOMIC JOURNEY AND WHERE TO NEXT:😍
The journey of malaysia's wealth creation probably begin with the formation of state owned enterprise(SOE) such as PKNS, PNSB, LLN, JABATAN TELEKOM and so on.
Thereafter tun m was encouraged by world bank to PRIVATISE such public owned into
a private tnb,telekom,proton etc. Paklah rebranded with an idris jala transformation plan and renamed GLC.
D najib went one step further by coming up with public-private partnership(PPP) whereby government guarantees the payment to the bank and the contractors get to build whatever the projects malaysia needs.
This include MRT, PAN BORNEO highway and ETS train etc.
Given all the shortcomings of GLCs such as the 1MDB fiasco, the time has come for the government to make it less corrupt, more efficient and profitable.
How?
Let go it's golden share that gave it 51% voting rights and leave the business to a business advisory panel that knows the business best.
What next?
We need to look into monetising products and services via digital economy. We democratise the businesses where everyone has equal chance to create wealth. we also focus on small medium enterprise. Help them all the way and not find excuses not to.
Currently, SME account for only 40% of malaysian gdp. We must target this to 70% of gdp.
The SME sector contributed 40 per cent to country's growth domestic product (GDP) which is expected to be rgt2 trillion in 2023 and provided employment for over seven million people.
Imagine if we increase from 40% to 70% of gdp in SME, additional rgt 600bil gdp will push malaysia to top income earners.
How do we do this?
One of them is via digital economy. Its the most exciting wealth creation business model in many years to come. The concept will be similar to when we built the PLUS highway and monetise it when they pay toll to use the road.
The government will benefit from limitless use of these online commerce and services.
Another thing, giving facilities such as financing and skill upgrade training alone is not enough. The facilitator must be HONEST about helping SMEs and go all the way to make it a success. Dont give excuses.
So, lets reform GLC and build SMEs. Forget rafizi's menu rahmah.. 🤣🤣
The question is whether this GLC culture can be uprooted overnight. In view of their entrenchment, would shaking up GLCs seriously undermine the Unity government? A short-term solution is perhaps not in sight.
Only 4 countries in the World have GLCs being Russia, China, Singapore and Malaysia. Only Malaysia is democratic whilst the others are authoritarian. No Western democracy has GLCs because of the firm belief that the business of making money should be left to the private sector and the avoidance of corruption. Here is the genesis of the GLCs. I was there. After the separation of Singapore from Malaysia, the Adviser to the Singapore Government, UN economics expert Dr Alfred Winsemius advised the establishment of the Jurong Industrial Park. By 1970, Starlite Ceramics, Fair Lady, Regency Hair Wigs, Eupoc, and many others failed because the Singapore traders were different from industrailists. . Many Malay workers were employed there. To fill the void, the Singapore Government turned its monopolies into businesses like NOL, SIA, DBS, Keppel, Sembawang, Far East Levingston etc. Being monopolies, all were profitable by the early 1980s. Lee Kuan Yew coined these businesses Government linked companies or GLCs -the only such enterprise in the World. In 1982, Deng Xiao Peng thought he had found the answer in the GLCs in turning Communism into Capitalism. So did Russia.. Both found out to their cost that corruption affecting the GLCs in Russia and China were rampant. With 100 Chinese on the run ! Unlike tidy Singapore where a phone call by Lee Kuan Yew will reveal all, Russia and China are vast lands which are difficult to control. In Malaysia, unwittingly, my 1972 Concept to capture Sime Darby PLC for the Malays to fast track into big business without impinging on Chinese business, was supported by the Prime Minister Tun Abdul Razak. The Concept was to own more British light engineering companies and move Malaysia upwards. Unfortunately, Tun Abdul Razak died. The World's first GLC, Sime Darby reverted to a trading company selling goods for others to this day. Sime Darby was bankrupted twice by the same Management at RM 1.20 billion in 1997 and RM 2.10 billion in 2010. No one was charged. No one was jailed. The shenanigans in Sime Darby set a bad example to the over 300+ GLCs to come. All have no owners, off Government Budget and most losing money. An ex Minister of Finance told me he closed down 1,800 GLCs in the 1980s ! The official debt of Malaysia is RM 1.3 trillion without the GLCS debts. The GLCs will kill us all.
More on Sime Darby. Vide. NST 2010 'True Story Of Sime Darby.'
Islam Madani will not stop the rot. It is too far gone because every Malay political elite is badly tainted. Replacing corrupt heads will only be the opportunity for aspiring greedy tag ons to take over and propagate the rot. The system set up over 60 years by political war lords has ensured that this unique Malay system will not disappear. This system ensures guaranteed financial and worldly success without stress for Malay political elites and their hangers on. So why should they give up on it?
If we look at it from malaysia inc, surely the majority shareholders in power today will be the a coalition of dap,pkr and amanah.
It is up to dap who is the biggest shareholder in the group to decide how best to make glc profitable.
If they are not making this decision,why keep blaming malays?
Didnt tony pua use to control all of PJ development via his counselors. Isnt he not a Malay?
That is much better than controlling a glc isnt it?
All GLCs everywhere kills off small and medium size businesses and has no relevance and when in Malaysia, it gives rise to corruption bundled with the usual race and religious rhetoric. And putting politicians on board increases likelihood of extreme corruption and now it is coming home to roost. Well done Malaysia. Stupid affirmative actions from Tun till today is the root cause. It will never change.
Tun wanted to take out the 51% voting shares the government has and pass it to an advisory panel.
This institutional reform would have left businesses be decided by those who knows best.
Anwar tried but today he himself put his men in so many glcs,those that he knows,his friends,etc.
Malays are not commercial minded. Sub contract to Chinese or Indian companies to run the project. Just collect the fees!
We need to support online commerce.theres 10mil malay accounts on shoppee alone. They are reversing the trend from being consumer to producer of wealth.
The malays sells products and the chinese buy them.On shoppee.
The cash now flows from a chinese account into a malay account.
We are all Malaysians.
It never ceases to amaze how in places like Malaysia and Singapore, the old colonial measures of success and failure is measured in terms of European standards and their preferential treatment to stereotypes they created and left behind in the minds of local and foreign observers alike.
A success is inevitably measured by a Chinese example (especially in economic terms) a failure distinctively Malay. Yet no one gives consideration to the enormity of the transformation of the Malays into an economically successful community over the years with the help of Dr. Mahathir's policy and affirmative action policies.
Instead we get a fairy tale example of the Singapore model which conveniently covers their monumental failures like the Temasek Sovereign and pension Funds nearly US$100 billon losses in 2007-2008 from very myopic investment decisions approved by Lee Hsien Loong's wife the Yale 'Genius'. Lee Kuan Yews insensitive remark that "workers will have to work longer and harder and put of retirement was cold comfort to those suffering because of his daughter in law's failures.
Ho Jing was cautioned by the former BHP CEO Chip Goodyear who had been earlier recruited to head Temasek. There were personality clashes between the two. But Goodyear's superior intellect and business acumen did not count for anything.
Goodyear warned hHo Jing against throwing money into an already overheated banking sector. She thumbed her noses at him and the GFC came and wiped the smile off her face. A Chinese "success story".
The media was complicit in hiding the story as it did not fit the stereotypes. There was a spate of Singaporean corporates failures in the following year, many because of accounting fraud and concealment of of losses and padding of revenues and profits. A staple of South East Asia's Chinese. Malaysia is a perfect showcase for these examples.
In Malaysia however, thee Malays of the upper classes tend to willingly and blindly take on Chinese business partners in the vain belief that these partners will wave a magic wand like they did smuggling opium in earlier times like the Haw Par Tiger Balm family had done mixing their pharmaceutical profits with opium and heroin profits to launder the illicit profits of opium and its derivatives.
The celebrated case of Khoo Teck Phuat a man trusted by the Sultan of Brunei who trusted the magician race by allowing Khoo to invest his billions. Not long after in the aftermath of the National Bank of Brunei collapse did the Sultan realize what was happening to him and his wealth in the hands of these "successful" Chinese businessmen. Khoo had been robbing him blind. Unable to arrest Khoo the Sultan arrested his son David who was still in Brunei and jailed him for being an accessory to his fathers sins.
Not satisfied with that failure with Khoo, the Sultan's brother Prince Jeffrey had entered into partnerships and associations with Malaysian Chinese and Singaporean Chinese businessmen costing him and his government over US$9 billion.
By contrast- Daim Zainuddin, the Tun Razak family and a host of other Malay businessmen succeeded beyond a Chinaman's wildest dreams. They did it lawfully and with the same patronage of government and bumi putera's that the Chinese secured for their successes.
Back to the main game, no country in the world has been spared the impact of a looming world wide recession bordering in some places as a depression. The all mighty and powerful USA and China its nemesis today face an economic downturn of herculean proportions.
Germany is already in recession. Britain is a basket case as are Portugal and Spain. The road goes ever on.
Malaysia's economic woes are not an exception but the rule of the economic woes of the world at this time.
Sir, With the arrival of Covid 19, the Ukraine War, US-China tensions, more World turbulence etc, the glittering revenues for Singapore disappeared after March 2020 and the carefully crafted Lee Kuan Yew Legacy for Singapore's survival destroyed. Man proposes. God disposes. In her desperation, Singapore cosy up to China and forgot who made Singapore great. Hence, for the very first time, democrat Washington Post blasted Singapore with an article on 'Lianhe Zaobao and China.' In her heyday, Lee Kuan Yew would be sitting next to his democrat President buddy soon after a Presidential election. Now Prime Minister of India Modi takes precedence. Singapore only welcomed the US Vice President for only 2 days with no orchid named after her. Singapore's rebuttal on Washington Post's attack sounded arrogant and forgot who made Singapore great ! Sad !
A SUGGESTION ON HOW TO CALM MALAYSIA FLAILING GLCs AND A QUICK LOOK AT IT'S ECONOMIC JOURNEY AND WHERE TO NEXT:😍
The journey of malaysia's wealth creation probably begin with the formation of state owned enterprise(SOE) such as PKNS, PNSB, LLN, JABATAN TELEKOM and so on.
Thereafter tun m was encouraged by world bank to PRIVATISE such public owned into
a private tnb,telekom,proton etc. Paklah rebranded with an idris jala transformation plan and renamed GLC.
D najib went one step further by coming up with public-private partnership(PPP) whereby government guarantees the payment to the bank and the contractors get to build whatever the projects malaysia needs.
This include MRT, PAN BORNEO highway and ETS train etc.
Given all the shortcomings of GLCs such as the 1MDB fiasco, the time has come for the government to make it less corrupt, more efficient and profitable.
How?
Let go it's golden share that gave it 51% voting rights and leave the business to a business advisory panel that knows the business best.
What next?
We need to look into monetising products and services via digital economy. We democratise the businesses where everyone has equal chance to create wealth. we also focus on small medium enterprise. Help them all the way and not find excuses not to.
Currently, SME account for only 40% of malaysian gdp. We must target this to 70% of gdp.
The SME sector contributed 40 per cent to country's growth domestic product (GDP) which is expected to be rgt2 trillion in 2023 and provided employment for over seven million people.
Imagine if we increase from 40% to 70% of gdp in SME, additional rgt 600bil gdp will push malaysia to top income earners.
How do we do this?
One of them is via digital economy. Its the most exciting wealth creation business model in many years to come. The concept will be similar to when we built the PLUS highway and monetise it when they pay toll to use the road.
The government will benefit from limitless use of these online commerce and services.
Another thing, giving facilities such as financing and skill upgrade training alone is not enough. The facilitator must be HONEST about helping SMEs and go all the way to make it a success. Dont give excuses.
So, lets reform GLC and build SMEs. Forget rafizi's menu rahmah.. 🤣🤣
The question is whether this GLC culture can be uprooted overnight. In view of their entrenchment, would shaking up GLCs seriously undermine the Unity government? A short-term solution is perhaps not in sight.
It is not about glc alone. It is about increasing SMEs contribution to malaysias GDP too.
Theres much wealth creation in micro industries but a real sincere support and encouragement can equal to glcs contribution to gdp.