2 days ago, I posted the global competitiveness rankings done by Wordl Economic Forum. Malaysia was ranked 24, down from 21 a year ago, and 17 2 years back.
Today I am going to post the rankings of the Ease of doing busniess 2010. This is compiled by WOrk bank yearly to reflect the ease of doing business including starting business in a country. The higher the ranking, the more pro-business is the regulatory process in the country…
You dont have to be economic genius to know that Malaysia’s ranking in this is slipping downwards too. Last year, we were ranked NO 21, and this year 23.
I am posting the top 30 rankings here. For the full list, you can go here and for the comparison between 2009 and 2010, you can view here.
Economy Ease of Doing Business Rank Starting a Business Singapore 1 4 New Zealand 2 1 Hong Kong, China 3 18 United States 4 8 United Kingdom 5 16 Denmark 6 28 Ireland 7 9 Canada 8 2 Australia 9 3 Norway 10 35 Georgia 11 5 Thailand 12 55 Saudi Arabia 13 13 Iceland 14 33 Japan 15 91 Finland 16 30 Mauritius 17 10 Sweden 18 43 Korea, Rep. 19 53 Bahrain 20 63 Switzerland 21 71 Belgium 22 31 Malaysia 23 88 Estonia 24 37 Germany 25 84 Lithuania 26 99 Latvia 27 51 Austria 28 122 Israel 29 34
Remember a fewyears ago, I wrote an article will Malaysia be marginalised, in which I quoted the FDI rakings of Malaysia:
(data from UNCTAD)
FDI flow to Malaysia slipped from NO 4 to NO 62 in 1995.
Apart from economic rankings, look at football. The FiFa latest rankings (2nd September) showed that Malaysia is now ranked 152…view here. We are in page 4 out of 5 pages of rankings.
What pathetic performance is that, you may ask… Indeed it is pathetic.. It is almost hopeless..
Our economy was 4 times that of SOuth Korea in the 60s, and was almost on par in the early 80s, but now SOuth Korea’s economy is now 4 times ours.
While MU medical school was considered par with University of Singapore when I was a medical student in the latter in the 70s, MU was no longer listed in the top 100 while University of Singapore (now known as National Unisversity of SIngapore is ranked NO. 30. View here
The trend is clear that in EVERY ASPECT, we are losing our standings, and the decline starts in the eighties, when we started shouting “Malaysia Boleh”.
Those of us who went through life in the 60s and 70s when Malaysia was really ‘Boleh”, would recall nostaligically that Malaysia regularly beat South Korea at Merdeka Tournament in Soccer.. Malaysian students were often the top students in overseas prestigge universities and colleges. Look what we have to day, even scholarship holders and top SPM 16As students were repeating.
While politicians in the past travel by buses and trains to KL to attend the annual meetings of their parties, often putting up 3 to a room, nowadays, they travel by limousines or planes (first class) to come here, and stayed in 5 star hotels… It can be seen that there is in fact an inverse proportion of how when politicians become “boleh’ and ‘rich’ beyond imaginations, the country has beocme more and more ‘ tak boleh”, slipping down in everything.
Corruption is of course the number one culprit. When politicians become corrupted, they tend to use thier ill gained money to cover the mouths of and gain support from thier supporters , cronies and subordinates, and this in turn lead to massive abuse of power, which subsequently lead to declining standard of governance, and compromising the judicairy.
COrruption also leads to an end to meritocracy. When there is corruption, the best company would not win a contract; the winner would be the one that is willing to use money to cover their incompetency..
Loss of meritocracy in turn leads to loss of excellence, and slowly but surely, the decline is seen in all fields, as reflected in the various rankings above.
We can try to arrest all these declines by tackling corruption, and nothing is better to show our resolve in this than going to the very bottom of the PKFZ issue.
I would therefore call upon the government to set up a Royal COmmission of Inquiry to investigate thoroughly into the PKFZ fiasco, rather than having a special task force. A RCI would show the people that the govenrment is serious in tackling corrupt practices, and would be able to go to the very bottom of the ills that is making our country sick and incompetitive.
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