The government's Special Task Force to Facilitate Business (Pemudah) was set up by former prime Minister Tun Abdullah Badawi in 2007 to enhance transparency and streamline procedures. Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak has urged Pemudah to redouble efforts, writes TAN SRI. G. GNANALINGAM.

WE should all be pleased that Malaysia has been ranked as one of the top 10 most competitive nations by the Swiss-based Institute for Management Development in its World Competitiveness Yearbook 2010.

Malaysia attained an index score of 87.228 compared with 77.162 in the previous year. This has propelled us from 18th place to 10th position. Indeed, this is a tremendous improvement.

Pemudah (the government's Special Task Force to Facilitate Business) was set up by former prime minister Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi in February 2007 to enhance transparency and streamline processes and procedures.

Pemudah was fortunate to get greater impetus from Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak when he took over in April 2009. He has urged for more dynamic changes as opposed to merely incremental changes.

Credit to civil service

A lot of work done in 2007 and 2008 bore fruit last year and this year. Eighty per cent of the credit should go to the civil servants. Additionally, credit should go to the Chief Secretary to the Government Tan Sri Mohd Sidek Hassan, the driving force of Pemudah, who is ably assisted by Tan Sri Yong Poh Kon and all other Pemudah members.

You would have read the article by Sidek titled Following in the footsteps of Aristides, but one of my best memories is when the chief secretary told one of his staff that excellence does not come from ideas or policies but is achieved when they are well implemented.

New resolutions

Some of the new developments in Pemudah are as follows:

- Employment of expatriates will be given automatic approval as long as the company pays expatriates more than RM8,000 monthly. On facilitating expatriate and skilled manpower, the Malaysian Investment Development Authority has 13 Immigration officers to spearhead the approval process of visas and work permits required by the industries for their expatriates and skilled workers.

- All spouses will automatically be entitled to five-year, long-term visit passes. Thereafter, they will qualify for permanent resident status.

- The current procedure for government procurement is to go for tenders, which are open to all. For tenders which are above RM100,000, 30 per cent will be reserved under the affirmative action programme to benefit the Bumiputera community while the other 70 per cent will be open to all.

However, tenders costing below RM100,000 will be restricted to Bumiputera companies and, over the years, these two will also be liberalised. Currently, we have more than 45,000 Bumiputera companies as class F contractors and there is a need to reserve these tenders for this community.

Private sector's role

The public sector has responded well, so it's now time for us in the private sector to play an even more prominent role to ensure Malaysia will become truly a competitive nation.

The New Economic Model calls for a high-income economy. The government, on its part, has increased wages by 35 per cent and continues to review the salaries of the police and armed forces.

But to achieve a high-income economy, the private sector has to pay its staff more through skills training, productivity mechanisation and Information and Communication Technology initiatives.

Minimum wage

We know the hardcore poverty level is RM450 a month and the basic poverty level is RM750 but families with RM1,500 a month are living under stress. We need to review the need for so many foreign workers.

The price of palm oil has gone up from RM600 to RM3,000 per tonne. Fuel price and material costs, such as steel, have shot up by 100 per cent. Companies may be able to withstand these cost increases but are determined to hold back on wages.

We all know what the poverty level is and have benchmarked it at RM750. Why can't we have a minimum wage of RM1,000?

Foreign workers

Until the 1990s, we did not have to contend with the issue of foreign labour. Our plantation and agriculture sectors, the largest producers of rubber and palm oil in the world, were all handled by Malaysians.

But since the 1990s, the construction, plantation and services sectors have all became highly dependent on foreign labour, apparently due to a lack of interest among the locals. There has since been an influx of foreign workers, so much so that the plantation sector insisted on having foreign labour and appealed to the government to reduce the double levy. But the plantation sector, if we recall, was developed by Malaysians.

Since the 1990s, many locals have been lured overseas where they are being paid a much higher salary for their skills. We have many Malaysians working in hotels and the services sector in Singapore.

Japan, Korea and Taiwan do not need foreign workers because they pay the locals high wages.

There are 935,000 Malaysians working overseas for higher income. In Singapore, a lot of them are like foreign workers in Malaysia. They would rather work at home if they get the same income.

Japan, China and the Middle East too need people to handle dirty and dangerous cargo, hotel waiters, waitresses and receptionists as well as construction workers. But they don't need 2.5 million foreign workers like us. Their wage structure, even for menial and manual workers, is attractive.

We are fortunate to have attracted so much foreign direct investment the last 20 years. Why do we keep salaries at the same level as it was 30 years ago? To me, Vision 2020 means a minimum salary of RM2,020. Only then can we say we have achieved developed nation status.

In Westports today, we have 3,500 employees who are all Malaysians. The lowest take-home pay for an operations worker is RM1,500 and they earn an average of RM2,000 based on productivity and incentives. We could have easily employed foreigners, paid them half the wages and saved RM60 million annually.

The long-term solution, in my opinion, is to ensure Malaysians have decent jobs with reasonable or respectable salaries.

Court cases

The courts are infamous for long drawn-out civil cases, even industrial disputes. Lately, the chief justice embarked on a plan to expedite court cases and we were all shocked to find out that 80 per cent of the delays were caused by the private sector and lawyers.

In most cases, the lawyers were the ones who requested for postponements. The chief justice and his officers expedited all kinds of cases and achieved tremendous progress.

Similarly, the Human Resources Ministry has expedited industrial disputes. Today, we have been told that there will only be a waiting period of two years from between nine and 10 years previously. The private sector should also contribute to enhance the efficiency.

Procurement

Government procurement will all now be by tender - open to everyone, though 30 per cent has been reserved for the affirmative action programme.

The Ministry of Finance has expedited the government procurement portal and made it accessible to the public. Like all computer systems, it will have bugs and glitches. I would rather congratulate the ministry for taking this bold initiative than highlight the minor mistakes.

Familiarity with Pemudah's improvements

It is essential that all private sector members familiarise themselves with all the improvements made by Pemudah and fully support the initiatives that have been implemented.

*The writer is a Pemudah panel member and Westports Malaysia executive chairman