GEORGE TOWN, Oct 3 – Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng said he are invited to officiate this event of the installation ceremony of PDCMC on Friday evening. He said PDCMC is a newly established working group of PCCC which been formed last year in September 2014 to represent Penang based property industry players.
“After 1 year establishment, PDCMC has managed to secure 150 numbers of new membership from both its membership strength and especially from the public. PDCMC has successfully generated members from smaller SMEs such as budget hotel, office, commercial and kindergarten players to big players in the industry such as the developers,” he said.
“Other members also consist of the professional like lawyers, bankers, accountants, real estate agents, licensed valuers, and insurers. I understand that in ensuring that the members are well represented, 8 Sub-Committees were formed and are headed by a knowledgeable and experienced market player in their respective industry namely Development, Construction, Building material, Property management, Property services, SME, Heritage and Tourism as well as Local government,” he said.
“When we first took over in 2008, our first order of priority was to prove that a clean government can perform better than a corrupt government. We have to deliver on basic services. To do that we have to be able transform the civil service. That is our CAT governance based on Competency, Accountability and Transparency,” he said.
Hence, Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng also said that while the financial scandals and Malaysia have become almost synonymous, Penang is proud to maintain its unblemished record due to this is mainly due to a few institutional procedures that they put in place based on the 3Es of enabling, empowering and enriching the people.
He said one of the first things we implemented was, believe or not, an open competitive tender system. All this while, he said the government procurement in Malaysia has been notoriously opaque, with those with “political cables” favoured over genuine contractors.
Because public officials in Malaysia are known to enrich themselves and their relatives, we also took a strong stand against the scourge of nepotism and cronyism by institutionalising periodical public asset declarations for all elected representatives in Penang, including the Chief Minister.
“In addition to that, we also expressly forbade all elected representatives and their family members from having any business links with the government. We have been commended by the annual Auditor-General Reports as the most financially efficient state government and even praised by Transparency International, the first time that any state or federal government in Malaysian history has been so lauded,” said Lim.
“All these measures resulted in our cash reserves increasing by 50% and our debt has been reduced by 90%. We recorded budget surpluses for every year since we took power in 2008. From 2008 to 2013, our total surpluses came up to RM453 million, from which we have spent RM287 on social welfare programmes to help the needy and other vulnerable groups within the state,” he said.
“In fact our RM453 million accumulated surpluses over 6 years far exceeded the surpluses accumulated over the previous 50 years from 1957-2007 under the previous BN government of RM373 million. As a direct result of these programmes, we were able to reduce our Gini Coefficient, which is the measure of income inequality, by 11% over a period of 3 years, from 0.42 in 2009 to 0.37 in 2012,” he said.
“Meanwhile, we had also recorded that GDP growth of 7.4% in 2014 in Penang; and the 11th Malaysia Plan estimates Penang’s GDP growth this year to be equally robust at 6.2%. We also have full employment with Penang recording the historic low 1.2% unemployment rate last year. Or a shortage of 20,000 workers. Such good employment market is translated to households in Penang enjoying household income growth of 7.6% annually between 2012 and 2014,” he added.
In the same time, he also said that Penang would have been a high-income economy this year if not for the fact the ringgit dropped 30% in value due to the RM 42 billion 1MDB financial scandal and RM2.6 billion donation scandal involving the Prime Minister.
“We stopped the corrupt practice and gave only to owner-operated fish farms up to a maximum of 8,000 square meters each. Further we instituted the check list system where approval must be given if all the boxes were ticked. And the outcome of approval must be given within 3 months. This is how a billion ringgit fish farm industry was born out of nothing at all,” he added.
