Status of Malaysia Economic Stimulus

How do you pick a high quality management team? My hero Warren Buffett seems to be able to do deal with people very fast because he can more or less able to tell whether the person loves the job or loves the money. He was once asked how did he pick the right management team when making investment decision. I don't think you can start interviewing the management team and evaluate based on a series of metrics. You know it by simply looking at their track records. Watch what they said and what they do and bottomline is results. Observe when their current leader steps down, if he/she is a good leader/manager, there should be a good successor in place and business continues to deliver great results.

It's the same thing when comes to evaluating our government. Their track records are not in their favor. When Pak-lah came on board in 2003, he intiated Government Linked Companies reformation. He launced his speech on his GLC transformation in May 2004 when stock market corrected 12% (KLCI fell from 904 to around 794). The feel good factors carried the momentum for about 7 - 8 months, KLCI recovered from the low of 794 to 924, 16% gains. Where are they today ? Easy way out is to blame him and that is the reason why he stepped down. Global credit crunch pulled everyone down. Partially true if we judge them by market capitalization but how about by their KPIs?

What is really dissapointing is this. We paid McKinsey, BCG and other high profile GLCs to draw up a grand plan but where are they today ?

The Putrajaya Committee on GLC High Performance (PCG) would like to thank the following for their support
and input into the development of this Reference Document for the Programme.

Bumiputra-Commerce Holdings Berhad
(formerly Commerce-Asset Holdings Berhad)
Bumiwerks Capital Management Sdn Bhd
Employees’ Provident Fund
Commerce International Merchant Bankers Berhad
Ernst & Young
Khazanah Nasional Berhad
Lembaga Tabung Angkatan Tentera
Lembaga Tabung Haji
Malayan Banking Berhad
Malaysian Airline System Berhad
Malaysian Employers Federation
Malaysian Franchise Association
McKinsey & Company
Ministry of Entrepreneur and Co-Operative Development
Ministry of Finance
Ministry of Human Resource
Perbadanan Nasional Berhad
Petroliam Nasional Berhad
POS Malaysia and Services Holdings Berhad
PricewaterhouseCoopers
Prime Minister’s Office
Sime Darby Berhad
Telekom Malaysia Berhad
Tenaga Nasional Berhad
The Boston Consulting Group
The Chambers of R. Sivagnanam & Associates
Sure Target Consultancy Sdn Bhd

We know where we stand with the benchmarking exercise and what are the indicators to pick.



Source: http://www.pcg.gov.my/trans_manual.asp, in case you want to read more about the grand plan.

After 5 years, we are going back to square one again:

(Malaysia Insider) KUALA LUMPUR, April 21 – Khazanah Nasional Berhad has declined to draw up the key performance index (KPI) for the government, citing a conflict of interest and instead will recommend other consultants for the task.

Sources said Khazanah has already informed Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak’s government about its decision after the Prime Minister announced last week that the state asset manager will make the index within a month with the first evaluation of performance due in November.

“Khazanah says it’s a conflict of interest as they report to the Prime Minister, who is also Finance Minister. How can one draw up targets for the bosses?” one source told The Malaysian Insider.

But the sovereign wealth fund, which has drawn up targets and transformation manuals for government-linked companies (GLCs) with the help of foreign consultants, have agreed to recommend these consultants to determine the KPI.

Click here to read the rest: http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/index.php/malaysia/23998-khazanah-declines-kpi-job-cites-conflict-of-interest-
Those commented on that article don't even know what the hell they were talking about, still talking KPI is good, let's get foreign consultant to come in and etc...... Enough is enough and my blood is boiling!

Now I am really pissed! Royally pissed you know. OK, let's get the consultant in again. Come on, I'm trying to be gracious and do not want to dirty my blog with unpleasant words. What is so difficult to set your KPI? We are paying million of Ringgit to CEO and now they tell us they don't know how to set KPI ? Do you know your job? If you don't I am more than happy to take your job for only half of your salary. What the hell the board of directors are doing? Do you know your job? If not, pay me 24,000/year director fees, I will do it for you to question your CEOs. But I doubt I will get the job because I don't know how to suck up to people.

Now let's turn to status of Malaysia Economic Stimulus. I was trying to find out the status of fund disbursement of economic stimulus. So I visited nice cool website of Rangsangan Ekonomi Malaysia at
http://www.rangsanganekonomi.treasury.gov.my/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=38&Itemid=1&lang=en

I'm dissappointed again, only 45,000 visitors care to know and guess what, nothing, absolute nothing was updated except a few speeches. Call me, label me a skeptic and cynic which I will accept it graciously but show me the RESULTS.