Govt no longer business friendly, says Dr M

'When the state competes with the private sector, both lose.'

PETALING JAYA: Former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad has lamented that the government is no longer business friendly.

“The state competes with the private sector when the private sector seems to be doing well,” he writes in his latest blog entry. “With the power conferred on the state, there is no way the private sector can win. They lose. But the states also lose simply because business is not the business of the state. Still the trend and preference is for nationalisation.”

In a long, rambling and somewhat incoherent article, Mahathir appears to be complaining mostly about the difficulties imposed by the government and its agencies on local businessmen. He says these complaints were relayed to him and they give a general picture of things being “rotten in the state of Malaysia”.

He does not refer to specific cases, but writes about the government’s unwillingness to pay for work done or its tendency to delay payments, the withdrawal of contracts “for unknown reasons”, the passing of a contractor’s project submissions to his rivals and several other obstacles placed in the path of local businessmen, including the need to pay corrupt officials to speed up approvals.

Sometimes, he says, “permits or whatever” are terminated prematurely because “the authorities want to take over the business.”

“Sometimes development permission cannot be given because some authority or powerful person wants the land. There is no one to appeal to, i.e. no one with real authority. Even if you know who wants the land, you cannot do anything. He is too powerful.”

He also complains about the government favouring foreign contractors. “Government-owned entities employing more than a thousand workers are suddenly given no job because some foreigner has been chosen to get the contract. The workers are sacked. And the government facilities may just close down or get some minor subcontract from the foreign contractor.

“There is a need for investments at home, but that is not for local companies. Malaysians institutions with oodles of money would do better by buying foreign technology companies and bringing them home to improve our technological capacities. But there is no encouragement for doing this.

“If a Malaysian company is in trouble, we seem to prefer bankrupting them and selling them to foreigners. Proposals to rescue by Malaysian white knights are not welcome. Due diligence cannot be done by the white knights for some unknown reasons.

“After tin was exhausted it was assumed that there would be no more mining in Malaysia. Then we found that we still have lots of other minerals. But mining for these is not for Malaysians. They are for foreigners only.”

He criticises the glorification of big business at the expense of the small businessman. “Big is beautiful. So why have small businesses? Kill them. But big businesses were once small. If you kill small businesses, then they can never grow big. So how do we get big business if we kill them when they are in their infancy?

“There is a lot of talk about the importance of small and medium enterprise. But what is happening on the ground does not reflect this importance.”

He also complains about the alleged demonisation of government critics, including himself, by the mainstream media.

“I am now being accused of forcing the government to do things which should not be done,” he says.

“There are many more complaints about the state which would give it a rotten smell. But not to worry. We will get used to the smell.”