Govt to ensure corruption stays out of public institutions

KUALA LUMPUR: The government is looking at ways to limit the capabilities of government institutions as to curb corruption, while ensuring that these entities still have enough flexibility to operate in a challenging environment.

This was shared by Ministry of Finance (MoF) Political Secretary Tony Pua during a panel entitled Trust and Accountability in the Public Sector at the ongoing Public Sector Financial Management Conference 2018, hosted by the Malaysian Institute of Accountants (MIA).

Pua, who is also the Damansara Parliamentary member, said restrictions is needed given that multiple government agencies have been exploited before for the benefits of few during the Barisan Nasional administration.

“In the last three to four years alone, the previous government has committed to some RM400 billion in infrastructure spending, which was not reflected in the current accounts as projects that will take place in the future. Massive projects that are either not needed or can be undertaken at half the contract price,” he told a room full of conference participants.

“These are future debt commitments that make no sense and will, if go unchecked, put a strain on our economy. These debts, if not controlled will put us on a trajectory of major recession in the event of a major global external shock. We have to right the off balance sheet to reasonable level.”

It is then important that a more transparent system of reporting, approval and the likes are now being put in place in order to not have this problem replicated.

“Our current Finance Minister, Lim Guan Eng has developed a reputation of being thrifty and overly concerned with public infrastructure spending and why shouldn’t he, given the excessive spending that took place in the previous government,” said Pua.

“While this government is still in power, we will ensure that we will curb the previous corruption and not to practice any. That said, we might not still be the ruling government in the next election and that’s fine, as that is how democracy works. But we will put steps in now as to ensure that these entities will not be further exploited, no matter who the ruling government is.”

One of the first few steps is to always explain and to be completely transparent in the government’s reasoning behind any public spending, according to Pua.

“This is apparent in the tabling of Budget 2019 with YB Lim explaining the reasoning of an allocation. In the old days, hardly any explanations were given on any public spending, but during this tabling, each was explained,” he said.

“We are also revamping the way civil servants work. We have very competent civil servants that have been trained to follow orders and not to question. This was proven a problem as most of them were aware of the corruption that was ongoing but did nothing because of the civil servants’ undersigned that goes “Saya yang menurut perintah”. We are changing this now.”

This sentiment was first voiced by Prime Minister Tun Mahathir Mohamad in August when he changed the undersigning to “Saya yang menjalankan amanah.”

Meanwhile, Lim had earlier this month stressed the need for transparency in corporate reporting in order to boost confidence and public trust in the capital market.

“In promoting corporate governance in the private sector, the Government also needs to ‘walk the talk’ by promoting public governance as we want to restore Malaysia’s good reputation abroad to facilitate business and investments for our economy,” he said in his speech at the National Annual Corporate Report Awards (NACRA) 2018.

“We are also committed towards fully implementing accrual accounting by 2021, and we have also begun to provide full disclosure of our government finances, contrary to the previous government’s approach of only highlighting those that it wanted the public to see and not revealing the true state of affairs,” he explained.

Source: NST