Authors: Alissa Marianne Rode

Authors: Nischal Ranjinath Muniandy and Alissa Marianne Rode

MyOBI ialah inisiatif IDEAS untuk mewujudkan satu desakan yang lebih besar mengenai kebertanggungjawaban di peringkat negeri. Indeks ini ialah sebahagian daripada respons kami terhadap suatu peluang demokrasi yang diwujudkan oleh keputusan pilihan raya tahun 2018 dan perubahan kerajaan yang berikutnya. Kami percaya bahawa pembukaan ruang sivik ini akan menjadi lebih bermakna jika masyarakat sivil dan khalayak ramai lebih berpengetahuan dan dilengkapi kemahiran yang diperlukan untuk menyertai proses demokrasi. Pandemik juga telah memperkukuhkan keperluan bagi satu kerajaan yang lebih telus dan bertanggungjawab dan membuka peluang yang lebih luas untuk menggunakan internet sebagai satu cara untuk mencapai matlamat ini.

Keputusan secara keseluruhan menunjukkan bahawa sesetengah kerajaan negeri di Malaysia tidak mendedahkan maklumat belanjawan yang mencukupi kepada khalayak ramai dan tahap pengawasan oleh Dewan Undangan Negeri terhadap belanjawan adalah tidak mencukupi, terutamanya semasa proses perumusan (tumpuan kajian ini). Indeks ini membantu untuk mengenal pasti beberapa tindakan pembaharuan paling mudah yang dapat diambil oleh kerajaan negeri dan Dewan Undangan Negeri untuk menambah baik ketelusan dan pengawasan belanjawan. Laporan ini membincangkan dapatan keseluruhan kajian ini serta tindakan-tindakan pembaharuan yang boleh diambil.

Layari laman web Pantau Wang kita untuk mengetahui tentang index ini dengan lebih lanjut.

Pantau Laksana: Assessing Malaysia’s Transparency and Accountability Initiatives in Implementing Emergency Fiscal Responses is a report that discusses the sources of funds, funds allocation, beneficiaries, and reporting of the nine economic stimulus packages (ESPs) rolled out by three successive governments during the COVID-19 pandemic from 27 February 2020 to 28 June 2021.

The nine ESPs were announced in response to the impact of COVID-19 restrictions on businesses, employment, and the supply chain, in order to cushion the impact of COVID-19 and to assist in economic recovery. Similar to many countries, Malaysia faced a tradeoff between efficiency and oversight in this unprecedented crisis. Due to the exigency, direct expenditures by the government in most of the packages were only retrospectively approved by the Parliament in August and December 2020. While much effort was invested in ensuring programmes were communicated to the public, reporting gaps remain in the sources of funding and fiscal impact of the measures announced.

IDEAS calls for more parties to continue requesting information about major programmes under the ESPs, and recommends the government that emergency bypass measures be restricted to immediate crisis relief.

The report is also a part of the IDEAS Pantau Laksana initiative, where IDEAS created a dataset that consolidates the data from the announcements and implementations of the ESPs. For more details, please visit pantauwangkita.com/pantau-laksana.

MyOBI is an IDEAS initiative to create greater demand for accountability at the state level. The index is part of our response to a democratic opening created by the 2018 election result and subsequent change of government. IDEAS believe that the opening of civic space will be more meaningful if civil society and the public are more well-informed and equipped to participate in the democratic process. The pandemic has also strengthened the need for a more transparent and accountable government and opened wider opportunities to use the internet as a way to achieve this.

The overall results indicate that some state governments in Malaysia have not disclosed adequate budget information to the public and the level of oversight by the state assembly on budget is not sufficient, especially during the formulation process (which this study focuses on). The index helps identify several low-hanging fruit reform actions that can be taken by state governments and state assemblies to improve budget transparency and oversight. This report discusses the overall findings of this study as well as these reform actions.

Visit Pantau Wang kita website to find more about this index.

Malaysia’s efforts to develop Bumiputera companies through public procurement policy hold out potentialities and pitfalls. The construction sector has been a major focus of Bumiputera development policies, and continues to offer upward mobility opportunities especially for technical and vocational education and training (TVET) graduates. The approach, with reservation of G1 contracts – the smallest out of seven grades – exclusively for Bumiputera contractors, and quotas and price preferences for medium to large contracts, stands out globally for its form and magnitude. These core elements have remained quite constant for four decades, but special initiatives, such as the Mass Rapid Transit’s (MRT) ‘carve out and compete’ and young entrepreneurship programme, and a 2019 introduction of time limits on G1 contractor licenses, have occasionally emerged.

This report presents an overview and update of pro-Bumiputera policies within public procurement, and the findings and implications of an original research project undertaken in April-August 2021. The research set out to survey and assess the distribution and characteristics of Bumiputera contractors, to investigate the effects of public procurement on Bumiputera company development, to evaluate the policy and make some recommendations moving forward.

• The two current major policy programmes, the 2019 National Anti-Corruption Plan and Shared Prosperity Vision 2030 (SPV2030), include specific commitments to reform and a redefinition of SOEs role in the economy. This paper describes specific commitments in those two major policy documents to achieve those objectives.
• The SPV2030 envisions the SOEs to play a greater role as an investor in key growth areas and a more proactive role in ensuring equitable development outcomes for Bumiputera.
• The NACP’s objective is to address the issues on SOE governance, especially to combat corruption and improve transparency, address political interference and ensure efficient use of government resources by the SOEs.

Government-linked investment companies (GLICs) and government-linked companies (GLCs) have a large presence in the Malaysian economy. A study published by the Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (IDEAS) estimated that the seven GLICs collectively owned at least 42% of total market capitalisation amongst listed firms in Bursa Malaysia and have a minority interest in at least 68,000 companies (Gomez et al., 2018).

The large presence of GLICs and GLCs in the domestic economy raised concerns over the quality and transparency of their directorial appointments. This particular issue gained greater attention following the exposure of the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) scandal. 1MDB was formed in 2009 a few months after Datuk Seri Najib Razak became Prime Minister and was put under the ownership of Minister of Finance Incorporated (MoF Inc.), one of the seven GLICs. In a few years 1MDB became involved with several large-scale projects, such as Bandar Malaysia, and has raised billions of US dollars through multiple bond issuances.