Reforms lift Malaysia to 18th in doing business ranking
By Lee Wei Lian, The Malaysian Insider
KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 20 — Malaysia jumped five spots to 18th from 23rd in the World Bank’s ranking for 2012 in ease of doing business on the back of Putrajaya-led reforms, says Pemudah, government’s business facilitation taskforce.
Singapore topped the list, followed by Hong Kong, while Malaysia came in fifth among all East Asian economies after Korea and Thailand.
This comes after the nation regained its 21st place ranking in the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Index this year after falling to 26th in 2010.
Tan Sri Mohd Sidek Hassan, co-chair of Pemudah and chief secretary to the government, said the World Bank rankings showed that the reform measures implemented by the Najib administration was starting to show results.
He urged public and private sectors to be mindful of competition and to keep improving.
“There are new entrants into the ranking and the existing ones are advancing in leaps and bounds in their improvements,” he said in a media statement. “We need to not only augment our services, but to do so in giant steps.”
RAM Ratings chief economist Yeah Kim Leng said the rise in the widely followed rankings showed that Malaysia’s reforms were showing tangible results.
“It will boost sentiment and lead to further impetus for transformation,” he said. “It is good that within a year or two the government has achieved significant strides.”
Yeah cautioned, however, that the challenge now was to ensure that the improved rankings translated to higher foreign and domestic investment as well as to also improve Malaysia’s ranking in Transparency International’s corruption perception index.
“If we can do that, then it will trigger a deluge of investment and the first world, high income status would be within reach,” he said. “We have the infrastructure and the resources; we now need to enhance the operating environment and combine it with the right policies.”
Malaysia ranked 56th on Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index in 2010, which was unchanged from its 2009 ranking.
The 2012 Ease of Doing Business report highlighted Malaysia’s initiative in introducing electronic filing in its courts, setting up specialised civil and commercial courts in Kuala Lumpur, and merging company, tax, social security and employment fund registrations at a one-stop centre for business start-ups.
Malaysia was also cited for being one of 24 countries that have established regulatory reform committees reporting directly to a prime minister or president.
Pemudah said Malaysia had improved in six categories, remained unchanged in two, and had a marginal deterioration in two areas: principally in Dealing with Construction Permits and Paying Taxes.
Sidek said the private sector should look at simplifying procedures to improve efficiency in order to realise the full effect of government reforms.
On categories where Malaysia did not score well — such as construction permits (rank 113) and enforcing contracts (31) — business associations and the legal professions needed to look at their work systems and procedures and identify bottlenecks.
