PEMUDAH Sets Up Five Focus Groups to Improve Delivery System

The New Straits Times, 29 February, 2008.
By: Hamidah Atan

PUTRAJAYA: Pemudah, the task force set up to improve public service delivery system, has established five “focus” groups to identify areas of improvements. Its 2007 annual report stated that the groups were formed following the World Bank's rankings of Kuala Lumpur. On Sept 26, 2007, the World Bank published its fifth edition of Doing Business 2008 Report. The reports covers quantitative indicators on business regulations and the protection of property rights from 178 countries.

Malaysia moved up a notch and ranked 24th under `ease of' doing business, dealing with licenses (105th from 137th), trading across borders (21st from 46th), enforcing contracts (63rd from 81st), registering property (67th from 66th), closing a business (54th from 51st), starting a business (74th from 71st), employing workers (43rd from 38th) and paying taxes (56th from 49th).

The rankings, the Pemudah report said, provided a clear indication that improvements were required in order to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of the public service delivery.

The focus group on enforcing contracts is tasked to work on reducing the time taken to enforce contracts from 600 to 200 days. The group on trading across borders is tasked with reducing the time taken for clearance of exports to six days and imports to five days, from 18 and 14 days, respectively. It will also review the processes and procedures, laws and policies, including the policy on pre-clearance of cargo, deferred payment and the Customs Act 1967.
The focus group on registering property is targeting to reduce the time taken for property registration to 50 days from the present 144 days while the group on paying taxes will address administrative burden in paying taxes by companies. The focus group on closing a business is tasked to reduce the time taken to close a business from 2.3 years to one year.

It is also tasked to reduce the cost from 15 per cent to 3.5 per cent of income per capita and increase the rate of recovery from 38.3 cents to 80 cents on the dollar. The report also stated its 2008 focus to institutionalise a consistent quality turnaround time of service across all 28 ministries, over 720 agencies and 144 local councils in the country.

Pemudah's scope in areas other than business but which impact the business environment will be expanded. It will also enhance transparency and accountability of the public sector and continue monitoring of initiatives already undertaken.

The report also stated that Pemudah would provide the catalyst for change towards placing Malaysia in the top 10 of the World Bank Doing Business ranking.

Chief Secretary to the Government, Tan Sri Mohd Sidek Hassan and Tan Sri Yong Poh Kon, who are both Pemudah co-chairman, made available the report after meeting Pemudah members at the Chief Secretary's office in Perdana Putra today. This is the first report for the task force set up on Feb 7 last year.

Sidek, in his speech, outlined Pemudah's 2008 commitments, which included:
? overhauling of services at land office, local authorities and frontline agencies;
? ensuring merit-based performance standards;
? increasing ethnic diversity in the public service;
? raising market activity for a competitive economy; and
? instilling a culture of serving with integrity and zero-tolerance to corrupt practices.

The task force, he said, would be relentless in its efforts to improve Kuala Lumpur's rankings, globally. The World Bank had itemised the areas where Kuala Lumpur could improve further, he added.

"I believe when the results (following Pemudah efforts) started coming in, we will no longer stay at 24 but higher,” he said. “We are doing this not for the World Bank or the World Trade Organisation (WTO) but for ourselves. However, if this process by Pemudah can improve our ranking and public service delivery, that will be a double bonus."”

"With the World Bank pressing us, we are pressing ourselves. The prime minister is the worse pressure cooker for us. He is the one who insisted that we do all this because he is the leader of this country. He wants to make us competitive and we are doing all this for our country."

Sidek also said there were some who were sceptical whether Pemudah could make a difference. "After presenting the six-month progress report to the prime minister on Aug 17, he decided that Pemudah carry on the work that it had begun and to keep up the momentum for change that it had successfully put in place."

"You will note from our annual report that we worked on urgent and important areas with high public interface. Time-consuming and dispensable processes are discarded."