Govt’s many ‘moronic’ ventures landing us in hot soup

By admin-s On Jan 8, 2015

The government should seriously consider doing less, not more as too many of its ventures have gone awry and are burdening the taxpayer.

TK Chua, FMT

There is a Midas touch and there is a touch that turns everything into mud. I am sorry, the latter applies to the government of Malaysia.

I think the government of Malaysia should seriously consider doing less, not more. The less the government does, the less harm and mud it will churn out.

The government has always claimed noble intentions and objectives when embarking on a venture. It wants to do great things for our economy and for our well-being, so to speak. But what do we get instead? The exact opposite! We get more debts, more tax burdens, more lawsuits and counter suits, more inefficiency and more distortions in our economy.

Here are a few examples. The government wanted to develop entrepot trade with Port Klang as a transhipment hub. But what we ended up with was the PKFZ fiasco with its unending debts, investigations, studies, court cases and lawsuits.

The government wanted quality beef supplies at reasonable prices for Malaysians but what we ended up with was the National Feedlot Corporation or NFC, a corporation that did almost everything except the thing it was set up to do. It has been drowning in countless investigations and protracted lawsuits since.

The government wanted strategic investments to leap-frog Malaysia’s development but what we ended up with was a corporation like 1MDB which is now saddled with numerous dubious dealings and massive debts. And this is even before the corporation did anything tangible for Malaysia.