Najib's ODOI or SDSI

Najib: GLCs can help in one district, one industry plan

Najib said Government-linked companies (GLC) must play an active role in the development of Malaysia’s One District One Industry (SDSI) initiative.

Najib also said all GLCs chief executive officers should be more serious and committed in making the rural socio-economic development agenda a success.

“SDSI services include product development, promotions, marketing, distributing, research and development,” said Najib. He said that of the 134 districts in Malaysia, 117 had SDSI products made by 2,886 entrepreneurs.

Idea and concepts are great. Taiwan had successfully reaped the benefits from the development and integration of the cottage industries. However, it remains to be seen whether we could emulate the success of others. One warning: concepts will remain concepts and idealism for as long as it is lip service and racial-base. No industry can developed into global-based without the support of global-commerce entities and forging strategic alliances. Bumiputera entrepreneurs and investments lacks the breadth and depth of global-com commercial integration. You can observed the Saudi and UAE investments and note their alliance with large American conglomerates although politically and ideologically they are "enemies". In fact, Saudis' and UAE pumped many hundreds of billions of investments into American corporations and also European outfits and have help to finance substantially, the American war with Iraq and Afghanistan.

Coming back to our local front, it seems that the frugal policies of Pak Lah has been buried and Pak Lah have now taken a new paradigm shift of turning Malaysia into a land of trillion dollar opportunities. Will it be the new visionary illusion? Is it achievable and delighting to investors or politicians? It seems to excite the politicians more than the investors. In the market-place and at every coffee shops and coffee houses, we can see the connectors busy promoting and selling potential projects. Ahmad, Ali, Abu and Aha are all busy negotiating with Ah Chong, Ah Kow and Ah Seng. Samy, Muthu and Subra are also joining forces with Aziz, Abdul and Adib in forging strategic alliances. Everyone is promoting the corridors, from East to West, and North to South.

Every project seems factual, real or surreal. Each of the project is worth billions. We have 382b IDR, 1.1b Nusajaya-JB Coastal Highway, 1.3b Tanjung Bin, 9b Bakun Undersea Cable, 1b Hyde Park, 4b UEM-Disney Theme Park, 1b Eastern Dispersal Link, 3.1b West-coast Highway, 2b Penang Monorial, 3b Penang 2nd Bridge, 2b KL-Kuantan Rail, 14.5b Ipoh-Padang Besar Double-track, 1.3b Johor Monorail, 24b Trans-peninsula Pipeline, 1bil Waste Management, 1b River Rehabilitation, 8b KL-S'pore Bullet Train, 6b Flood Mitigation Project, 5b Pahang-S'gor pipeline, 1.6b Klang Valley Public Transport system, and hundreds of projects more that is worth about 200m to 500m. Added to it, we have Syarikat Perumahan Malaysia Bhd who are partnering landowners with the Design-Built-Turnkey projects that is worth some 5b and BLT who is also launching many Bs of projects.

Malaysia is full of potential projects. The question thus arise is where do we get the money to finance these projects? Private-financing initiatives (PFI) is the call sign. Wages for civil servant is UP; Toll-rates is UP, Fuel price was Upped few times in a year, recently, price of rice is UP (by 25%), yesterday cigarettes price is UP (by 80sens per pack), chicken egg price was Upped in April 2007 (by 3sens), Pos Laju is UP (by 10%), sugar and flour price is UP, teh tarik and Kopi-O had upped, most or almost all consumer products have their prices adjusted in tandem with all these hypes. Every housewives are crying; every smokers have no more tears to shed. The song, Killing me softly with his fingers rings out loud. But we can't complain for the government has done its best to give us the best price...