‘NO MORE FAT SALARIES FOR GLC BOSSES’
PH govt wants to place professionals in GLCs, says Dr M
THE days of top executives of governmentlinked companies (GLCs) drawing fat salaries regardless of their companies’ performance is over, Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad has warned.
Giving the rationale for the move, he said what happened in the past was that the government found it convenient to place its supporters in GLCs, and these executives got a good income from the companies.
“The result is that we have a lot of people who are non-professionals and unfamiliar with business, but holding high posts in the GLCs, and this of course defeats the whole purpose.
“The GLCs inevitably lose money, but the salaries of these people are very high and they enjoy all this without bothering whether the company makes a profit or not,” he said in an interview with Investvine, the Hong Kong-based business news portal covering mainly Southeast Asia.
Dr Mahathir said the Pakatan Harapan government wanted to place professionals in GLCs and their salaries would not be very high.
“The salaries may be slightly higher than that of the civil service, but if they perform, then we’ll pay them a bonus.
“Otherwise, they won’t receive the high income as currently, and we will change the management so that we appoint professionals.”
He said it did not matter whether “they are party loyalists or not”, but it is key that they must be professionals fitting into the business of the company.
In the interview conducted by Investvine director Imran Saddique and correspondent Firoz Abdul Hamid, Dr Mahathir spoke at length about the concept of GLCs and Khanazah Nasional Bhd, the government’s strategic investment fund which he set up in the 1990s when he was prime minister for the first time.
He said the idea was prompted by the apparent inability of Malays to retain shares that they acquired under the government’s affirmative action.
“When they get their shares, they inevitably sell them all and then they go back to having no shares.
“So, we thought that instead of giving directly to the Bumiputeras, we’ll create a body that can hold the shares until such time when they have the capacity to retain those shares.
“That was the original intention, but along the way, Khazanah decided that it should take all the shares for itself and if they are good shares, why not acquire the shares at the time of listing when the price was very low.
“And so they forgot about holding the shares for Bumiputeras.”
Instead, Khazanah decided that it should be holding the shares forever as part of the companies owned by the government, he added.
Dr Mahathir said the previous government no longer followed the initial intention of the formation of Khazanah.
He said the government would now have to go through the huge number of companies that Khazanah had shares in and categorise them into the ones that could be profitable, might be profitable and those that might be losing money.
“We need to talk about closing some of these companies to reduce the overall number and go back to the original intention of holding the shares allocated to Bumiputeras until such time when they can buy,” said Dr Mahathir.