The Malaysian government plans to unveil its New Deal for Business policy document in June. Accompanied by a package of measures designed to make it easier to conduct business in the country, the event will be impossible for the private sector to ignore.
The Economy Ministry says the new deal is intended to lift business confidence, stimulate economic growth and drive the country’s digital transformation. The ministry adds that the new programme will boost domestic and foreign direct investment, job creation and GDP growth.
According to the government, the new deal will achieve these objectives by improving the business environment in Malaysia, with the emphasis being on addressing structural and situational challenges. The areas of focus will be bureaucratic complexity, inefficient regulatory delivery and undue regulatory burden.
The new deal requires government and business to work together well
The great pivot
Calling the initiative a new deal is an interesting choice of words. For many people, it brings to mind the turning point in American history when the federal administration under President Franklin D Roosevelt made a series of legislative and policy moves in the 1930s, known collectively as the New Deal, to haul the US out of the depths of the Great Depression.
The ‘new deal’ term has become an evocative and convenient label. There are, for example, frequent public conversations across the globe about green new deals.
Recovery efforts after the Covid-19 pandemic have sometimes been given similar names. There’s a Japanese digital new deal and a Korean new deal (which includes a digital new deal and a green new deal).
Scotland also has a new deal for business, whose implementation plan came out last October. It relies on the government and business maintaining a solid partnership in order to create the conditions where business feels empowered to invest, innovate and provide good jobs.
Malaysia aspires to be one of the world’s most business-friendly economies
Collaboration
Although not stated explicitly, Malaysia’s new deal also requires government and business to work together well. This is evident in the fact that the Special Task Force to Facilitate Business – people usually use its Malay acronym, Pemudah – is in charge of producing the policy document and will oversee the execution of the plan.
Set up in 2007, Pemudah is a high-level collaboration between the public and private sectors to ‘address bureaucracy in business-government dealings and improve how the government regulates businesses’. The task force is co-chaired by the chief secretary to the government and a business leader.
The latest step in Malaysia’s new deal journey is a public consultation that invites businesses to identify the pain points they encounter in 10 key areas of the business environment. Those areas include business entry, utility services, financial services, labour, taxation and market competition. Also sought in the consultation are recommendations on how to respond to these problems and issues.
The key areas are identical to the 10 topics covered in the World Bank’s Business Ready (B-Ready) project, whose chief products will be reports that benchmark the business environment and investment climate in most countries. The first report will be available in September this year.
If the World Bank assesses your economy as among the easiest in which to do business, or concludes that your country’s business environment has improved substantially, more investment decisions are likely to go in your favour.
Like any other country, Malaysia aspires to be consistently recognised as one of the world’s most competitive and business-friendly economies. The new deal will always be about comprehensive regulatory reforms that help businesses to thrive. If these reforms are true and effective, Malaysia will surely progress further.
