Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi is happily announcing one mega development project after another… the Iskandar Development Region (IDR), Northern Corridor Economic Region (NCER) and other billion Ringgit projects like Trans-Peninsular Oil Pipeline and all the railway projects etc.
It is easy to come out with a plan, but lots of questions remain uncertain… is it feasible to work on all those mega projects at the same time? Are Malaysians capable of funding the projects ourselves? How are we going to attract foreign investments? Who are going to benefit from the projects? What will happen to the projects if another economic crisis landed on Malaysia like in 1997?
Do we need these projects?
Perak government has spent millions if not billions to develop various industrial areas; most of those areas are close to being wasteland now. It is easy to draw planning and providing infrastructure, but what happen if we could not attract people to invest at those areas? And do we really need all these development?
As far as I know, MSC is not a huge success yet. There are still lots of empty slots in Cyberjaya and Putrajaya… and from the current rate it seems that their potential will not be fulfilled by 2020. So, what makes the government think that we are able to handle mega projects like IDR and NCER at the same time?
A good example is the Port Klang Free Zone (PKFZ); introduced in 2004 but is not moving anyway at the moment.
Who is going to benefit from the development?
People from north and south might be happy that they are not marginalized by national development projects, that they are getting some fair juice from the government.
One good thing that I see from NCER is that the agriculture sector is part of the plan. I am not sure if the small plantation owners and the small farmers are going to benefit though… I hope their businesses are not taken away by conglomerates instead.
The 1st group of people that will benefit from the plans are probably the land owners… follow by the foreign labours. The construction work will demand lots of workforce, but I doubt many Malaysians would want to work in the tough environment. Besides, the construction firms would probably hire foreign workers straight away without giving much chances to local labours.
I guess they will be another surge of foreign workers coming in… and it’s always easy to get them in and not easy the other way around; more social problems are coming ahead of it’s not handed properly.
The transparency of the government contracts will be in question again. Is it going to be open tender for government contracts or will it be going directly to the pre-selected companies? Even if there is open tender for the contracts, would it be fair and square?
For common citizens, the IDR and NCER are supposed to create lots of working opportunities, ONLY if it is as successful as planned. We’ll see how it goes.
Private Finance Initiatives (PFI)
Lots of the projects will be funded by Private Finance Initiatives (PFI); two-thirds of the NCER’s RM177 billions investment will be funded by the private sectors, that’s like ~RM109bil alone for NCER.
How many investors in Malaysia are capable to support all those development? In the end it’s very likely that government-linked companies like Petronas, UEM, Khazanah etc. that are going to dump out a large sum of money to fund the projects… should we still call these PFI if it happens?
Again, the Port Klang Free Zone is a good example of the failure for PFI funded projects… and seems like government might be forced to bail out the project, and the issue is turning scandalous.
Foreign Investors
I felt that the projects are losing cutting edge to attract massive foreign investments. Besides, I don’t think that IDR and NCER will attract new group of foreign investors… those investors that want to come to Malaysia will come regardless of the new development; they will find a place that is already developed if they want to.
I think that the introduction of IDR and NCER is pulling opportunities away from other Malaysia region… in fact I think that IDR and NCER might be crashing with each other, and in this case I don’t think competition is good for the nation at all.