I do not know who is that participant and I speak from experience here.

I once worked for a foreign company that set up a factory in N Sembilan. MITI has approved our application for Pioneer Status and Foreign Investment Committee has approved the foreign money coming in. The fire department has ok our factory builidng as well.

However, the Majlis Daerah did not issue a lesen kilang or whatever the name was. I went to see the Ketua but was told to wait while lower rank officers came and told me that I did not have a licence to run the factory.

Doing away some layer of bureacracy is good. It is also better not to have inconsistencies on finer points between states.

I think the more important issue regarding developing ICT or whatever other industry is:

1) other countries are cheaper than us - Vietnam and China

2) China has a bigger market

3) government offcials here delaying things and infuriating people that have choices - remember that Indian businessman who revealed that he turned down to invest in Malaysia

We have the following advantages that can be exploited to maintain our competitive edge but we are gradually losing them…

1) stable political and social conditions-sorry, recent events regarding political and religious issues get me worried about future trend

2) good command of English…but we have deteriorated so badly over the last 2 decades

3) brain drain of the best local workers - now that’s a can of worms - do we have a practice to attract them back as well as nurture and retain our best brains? I don’t think so.

4) good infrastructure - excessive construction cost of highway (the Gerbang Perdana thing), raising electricity tariffs seems to suggest the cost of such infrastructure is getting higher….