Dr. Hsu's forum

I will paraphrase 3 paragraphs of the Business Times of Singapore here. For the full article , please go to the link  and read it.

From the Business times:

26th March 2007 

………………..By giving long tax holidays, freedom to source funds and to employ foreign workers, plus allowing foreign investors full ownership of their company, Malaysia hopes to pull in a huge chunk of the estimated US$105 billion
needed to develop south Johor.

But the waiver of FIC rules only applies to six areas in the IDR – creative industries, educational services, health care, financial advisory and consulting, logistics, and tourism-related services. It stops far short of Musa Hitam’s suggestion that Johor be exempted from Malaysia’s affirmative action policy so that IDR could succeed.

The former deputy prime minister was being practical when he made the controversial proposal in an interview with Bloomberg. Mr Musa sits on a five-strong advisory panel to IRDA, which is the super regulator for the
region, and his fellow panelists include other eminent Johoreans such as Malaysia’s wealthiest son, Robert Kuok.

It was a coup to get Mr Kuok on the panel but he is unlikely to have agreed if he had not been assured that the powers-that-be would heed his advice. That advice would have been in line with Mr Musa’s suggestions. Truth be told, his thoughts would likely to have been to scrap the New Economic Policy (NEP) in its entirety, and Malaysia would instantly be more competitive and attractive to foreign investors. But after more than three decades of the NEP, any dismantling will have to be incremental and gradual.

Mr Musa’s suggestion was likely to have been floated with the tacit approval of Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who is under pressure to enhance the country’s competitiveness. Despite Malaysia’s enormous economic progress under the leadership of former premier Mahathir Mohamad, he could not put an end to the NEP or empower the Malays to compete on an equal footing, erasing their so-called special privileges in the 22 years he was in office.