Showing posts with label Business. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Business. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Najib Cut Fuel Subsidy Now,Better Late Than Never.


Hantu Laut

In spite of the oppositions pouring scorn on Prime Minister Najib's capability of running the country he did make significant transformation in some key areas crucial to the economic well-being of the country.

The World Bank Report below shows that Malaysia is among the economies that improved the most across three or more doing business areas

So, Najib did nor rest on his laurels as perceived and deplored by the opposition Pakatan Rakyat leaders.

For starter, the introduction of the GST is a welcome sign that Malaysia is moving forward.

The next big thing Najib should do to is trim the budget deficit by removing fuel subsidy completely. It is the most wasteful and unproductive subsidy that have eroded the nation's coffers. The subsidy have led to smuggling of our resources to neighbouring countries, where fuel costs are higher and sold at market price. 

Najib should not wait too long to remove the subsidy, he must do it  soonish, preferably before the end of 2014, on the premise that "time is a good healer" hence if the premise is true, then the conclusion must be true. Time heals the grieving heart, people tend to forget the bad times as time goes by.

The government spent almost RM24 billion a year on this wasteful and unproductive spending, which most Malaysians are unaware of and failed to appreciate. 

Just imagine how much developments beneficial to the people, or reduction of our fiscal deficit can come from this money, instead, of turning it into wasteful and toxic carbon monoxide.

He can do wonders with the saving.

Read the World Bank Report here.



Ease of Doing Business in
Malaysia

This page summarizes Doing Business 2014 data for Malaysia. The first table lists the overall "Ease of Doing Business" rank (out of 189 economies) and the rankings by each topic. It also lists the economy's distance to frontier (DTF)** measure. The rest of the tables summarize the key indicators for each topic and benchmark against regional and high-income economy (OECD) averages.

ECONOMY OVERVIEW

REGIONEast Asia & Pacific
INCOME CATEGORYUpper middle income
POPULATION29,239,927
GNI PER CAPITA (US$)9,800
CITY COVEREDKuala Lumpur
DOING BUSINESS 2014 RANKDOING BUSINESS 2013 RANK***CHANGE IN RANK
68down 2

DOING BUSINESS 2014 DTF** (% POINTS)DOING BUSINESS 2013 DTF** (% POINTS)IMPROVEMENT IN DTF** (% POINTS)
81.8780.06down 1.81
Positive=Doing Business reform making it easier to do business. Negative=Doing Business reform making it more difficult to do business.
DB 2014 RANK16DB 2013 RANK***19CHANGE IN RANKup3
DB 2014 DTF** (% POINTS)94.31DB 2013 DTF** (% POINTS)93.41IMPROVEMENT IN DTF** (% POINTS)up0.90
Information on new business density and number of newly created firms with limited liability can be found at Entrepreneurship Database.
IndicatorMalaysiaEast Asia & PacificOECD
Procedures (number)
375
Time (days)
6.037.811.1
Cost (% of income per capita)
7.629.83.6
Paid-in Min. Capital (% of income per capita)
0.0293.310.4
No.ProcedureTime to CompleteAssociated Costs
1Apply to the Companies Commission of Malaysia (CCM) on the prescribed form (13A) to ensure the availability of the proposed company name1 dayMYR 30 per name search application
2Company Secretary prepares the company incorporation documents3 daysMYR 1,000
3File necessary documents with the Companies Commission of Malaysia (CCM) one-stop shop and obtain company incorporation, tax registration, registration with the Employment Provident Fund (EPF), Social Security Organization and the Inland Revenue Board, a1-2 daysMYR 1,000 (registration fee)+ MYR 220 (stamp) + MYR 100 (post-incorporation package)
** The distance to frontier (DTF) measure shows the distance of each economy to the "frontier," which represents the highest performance observed on each of the topics including Getting Electricity across all economies included in Doing Business. An economy’s distance to frontier is indicated on a scale from 0 to 100, where 0 represents the lowest performance and 100 the frontier. Read more...
***Last year's rankings are adjusted: they are based on 10 topics and reflect data corrections.

Friday, October 25, 2013

Where Ignorance Is Bliss, 'tis Folly To Be Wise: Bumiputra Follies

Hantu Laut

Today, Suria Capital Holdings Bhd proudly announced its JV with SBC Corporation Bhd to develop  Jesselton Quay to the tune of RM1.8 billion in net sale value. Both are public listed companies on the KLSE, one bumiputra dominated and the other Chinese dominated. Suria's asset base is bigger than that of SBC.The story here.

It's the same old story with most GLCs, they can't do their own things, forever will never learn the trade, or run a proper business of their own. They will always run to the Chinaman to do the business for them.

It is time that all bumiputra individuals, enterprises and GLCs grow up, learn to take risk and do their own things.

The biggest culprits are GLCs run by bumiputras who do fuck all, give everything to the Chinaman to do under JV scheme, where greater part of the profit will go to the Chinaman and the government agency landed with teeny-weeny portion of the profit.

All over the country the same stories are being repeated year after year and the bumiputras never got to learn the trade and they are happy not to, doing so mean having to do extra work.

I have seen over the years that I have been doing business here and in Peninsula Malaysia almost every GLCs over there and in Sabah with prime land in the middle of the city do JV with Chinese businessmen to develop the land that they got for nothing from the government .

For the happy Chinaman the land cost is zero and the risk is almost zero, all they have to do is provide the building plans, raise the financing, appoint the contractor and market the properties and all the costs are paid for by the project, while the so-called high calibre bumiputra management team sit on their arses and enjoy the big fat salaries and perks for doing nothing.

Is it that difficult to be a developer like the Chinaman?

All Chinese businesses had humble beginning, start from the bottom and build their way up, they don't go to college to learn to be a contractor or developer. It's a learning process that takes years through experience and exposures. Some will succeed and some will fall by the wayside, but that the risk you have to take doing business.

It is a great shame that with such prime land and a bankable proposal the bumiputras still can't undertake the project on their own.

Name it, SEDCO, SUDC, Warisan Harta Sabah and many others, there is always the indispensable Chinaman in the midst.

Maybe, the government should employ only Chinaman to head every GLCs, so all the profits can stay with the company.

It's obvious without the Chinese the economy of this country is fucked.

Monday, April 16, 2012

The Web's Enemies

Web freedom faces greatest threat ever, warns Google's Sergey Brin

Exclusive: Threats range from governments trying to control citizens to the rise of Facebook and Apple-style 'walled gardens

Sergey Brin
Sergey Brin says he and Google co-founder Larry Page would not have been able to create their search giant if the internet was dominated by Facebook. Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

The principles of openness and universal access that underpinned the creation of the internet three decades ago are under greater threat than ever, according to Google co-founder Sergey Brin.

In an interview with the Guardian, Brin warned there were "very powerful forces that have lined up against the open internet on all sides and around the world". "I am more worried than I have been in the past," he said. "It's scary."

The threat to the freedom of the internet comes, he claims, from a combination of governments increasingly trying to control access and communication by their citizens, the entertainment industry's attempts to crack down on piracy, and the rise of "restrictive" walled gardens such as Facebook and Apple, which tightly control what software can be released on their platforms.

The 38-year-old billionaire, whose family fled antisemitism in the Soviet Union, was widely regarded as having been the driving force behindGoogle's partial pullout from China in 2010 over concerns aboutcensorship and cyber-attacks. He said five years ago he did not believeChina or any country could effectively restrict the internet for long, but now says he has been proven wrong. "I thought there was no way to put the genie back in the bottle, but now it seems in certain areas the genie has been put back in the bottle," he said.

He said he was most concerned by the efforts of countries such as China, Saudi Arabia and Iran to censor and restrict use of the internet, but warned that the rise of Facebook and Apple, which have their own proprietary platforms and control access to their users, risked stifling innovation and balkanising the web.

"There's a lot to be lost," he said. "For example, all the information in apps – that data is not crawlable by web crawlers. You can't search it."

Brin's criticism of Facebook is likely to be controversial, with the social network approaching an estimated $100bn (£64bn) flotation. Google's upstart rival has seen explosive growth: it has signed up half of Americans with computer access and more than 800 million members worldwide.

Brin said he and co-founder Larry Page would not have been able to create Google if the internet was dominated by Facebook. "You have to play by their rules, which are really restrictive," he said. "The kind of environment that we developed Google in, the reason that we were able to develop a search engine, is the web was so open. Once you get too many rules, that will stifle innovation."

He criticised Facebook for not making it easy for users to switch their data to other services. "Facebook has been sucking down Gmail contacts for many years," he said.

Brin's comments come on the first day of a week-long Guardian investigation of the intensifying battle for control of the internet being fought across the globe between governments, companies, military strategists, activists and hackers.

From the attempts made by Hollywood to push through legislation allowing pirate websites to be shut down, to the British government's plans to monitor social media and web use, the ethos of openness championed by the pioneers of the internet and worldwide web is being challenged on a number of fronts.

In China, which now has more internet users than any other country, the government recently introduced new "real identity" rules in a bid to tame the boisterous microblogging scene. In Russia, there are powerful calls to rein in a blogosphere blamed for fomenting a wave of anti-Vladimir Putin protests. It has been reported that Iran is planning to introduce a sealed "national internet" from this summer.

Ricken Patel, co-founder of Avaaz, the 14 million-strong online activist network which has been providing communication equipment and training to Syrian activists, echoed Brin's warning: "We've seen a massive attack on the freedom of the web. Governments are realising the power of this medium to organise people and they are trying to clamp down across the world, not just in places like China and North Korea; we're seeing bills in the United States, in Italy, all across the world."

Writing in the Guardian on Monday, outspoken Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei says the Chinese government's attempts to control the internet will ultimately be doomed to failure. "In the long run," he says, "they must understand it's not possible for them to control the internet unless they shut it off – and they can't live with the consequences of that."

Amid mounting concern over the militarisation of the internet and claims – denied by Beijing – that China has mounted numerous cyber-attacks on US military and corporate targets, he said it would be hugely difficult for any government to defend its online "territory".

"If you compare the internet to the physical world, there really aren't any walls between countries," he said. "If Canada wanted to send tanks into the US there is nothing stopping them and it's the same on the internet. It's hopeless to try to control the internet."

He reserved his harshest words for the entertainment industry, which he said was "shooting itself in the foot, or maybe worse than in the foot" by lobbying for legislation to block sites offering pirate material.

He said the Sopa and Pipa bills championed by the film and music industries would have led to the US using the same technology and approach it criticised China and Iran for using. The entertainment industry failed to appreciate people would continue to download pirated content as long as it was easier to acquire and use than legitimately obtained material, he said.Read more.