Clouding our Blue Skies
It seems that Malaysia is losing its competitive edge according to the report from ISIS. An earlier edition mentioned that our ranking dropped quite significantly but that story appears to be unavailable. You can read the latest version here.
I guess the problems we are facing with Proton and MAS reflect our decline in the business world.
To give the proper signals to the international business community, we need to appoint CEOs of calibre so that everyone can understand that Malaysian companies are managed efficiently.
One matter that bothers me a lot is the sheer size of the present Cabinet. We have 25 ministries with all the required paraphanelia like staff, offices and motor vehicles. Plus 6 extra ministers in the PM's Department.
I wonder how many minutes it takes to serve the morning coffee in the weekly Cabinet meetings.
You can read a letter I wrote to Malaysiakini in January 2004 entitled "We have 27 ministers when 15 will do". It compares the previous cabinet with those of the USA and the UK.
Now we have a situation of "So many Chiefs, not enough Indians".
And I am not referring to Samy Vellu.
posted by H J Angus @ 11:57 pm
1 Comments:
haha true. A couple of years back, a relative of mine came from Sri Lanka and mentioned that for such a small nation as that, they have more minister(including junior ministers, deputy ministers) than Malaysia.
Like Sri Lanka, We have to worry about the 'feelings' about the other races. Representation is one thing. If not the races, the another requirement is to take care of the 'friends' who have helped in campaigning.
Having more ministers may be a dent in the national coffers. As long as they do their duty well and help to increase Malaysia's competitiveness in their respective field, then having them is well worth it. Ofcourse, if they're not doing their duties well, than that would be a problem for our country.
A cabinet reshuffle is said to occur. Let's wait and see.
On another note, having many ministers is another way of increasing government expenditure. If I recall my economics correctly, If government expenditure increases, GDP will also increase. Aggregate Demand will also increase. Am I right?
Ofcourse modern thinking would be to do more with less. I agree with that too however life is more complicated than that.
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