Business licensing cost in Malaysia to be slashed soon
KUALA LUMPUR: Business licence compliance costs in Malaysia will be reduced by more than half by June following a joint review by the government and private sector.
Chief Secretary to the Government Tan Sri Mohd Sidek Hassan, who is co-chairman of the Special Task Force to Facilitate Business or Pemudah, said 395 of 761 business licences will be eliminated or simplified.
This follows Pemudah’s work with 23 ministries and federal agencies to reduce and eliminate licences, shorten the time for issuing and expand the validity period of the licences.
“This whole initiative will result in an estimated reduction of RM729 million in business licence compliance cost when this exercise is completed in June 2012,” he said in the Pemudah annual report released yesterday.
He said the proposed liberalisation of 17 sub-sectors under the services sector would be undertaken in stages in 2012.
A priority list of these sectors for equity liberalisation has been drawn up.
This will improve the investment climate and contribute significantly to the goals of the New Economic Model, he said.
The public-private collaboration addresses concerns about public service delivery.
Pemudah is now a team made up of 25 highly respected individuals of which 14 are heads of selected government ministries and departments, 10 leaders of Malaysian businesses and the president
of the Malaysian Trades Union Congress.
Taking on a “I must do something” formula solves more problems, remarked Sidek, enabling Malaysia to move to the 18th position from 23rd position in the World Bank Doing Business 2012 Report.
Pemudah has also collaborated with TalentCorp and the Ministry of Home Affairs to introduce the I-pass for expatriates and the
Ministry of Education on policies and programmes.
On private sector delivery system, Pemudah has set up a Focus Group to address concerns related to key areas that impact not only the cost of doing business but also the lives of the manon-the-street. These include banking, legal matters, and utilities.
Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers president Tan Sri Yong Poh Kon said a number of other significant issues mooted by the private sector have received the support of the public sector.
These included compensation for late refunds of income tax, reduction in time bar for tax audits and the review of logistics costs.
"We made progress on the simplification of loan disbursement procedures to SMEs (small and medium enterprises) and are currently working on reducing delays in loan disbursements," he said.
The task force also assisted in supporting talks on bilateral and multilateral free trade agreements.
"This includes the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement and Malaysia-EU Free Trade Agreement through its inputs on procurement and other policies that required the concurrence of policy makers across ministries before negotiations could be convened."
Source : New Straits Times
Date : 28 February 2012
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