Cut the red tape, Malaysia

THE fact that Malaysia has moved up nine places to secure a global ranking of 15 in the World Bank’s business index after several business reforms in the past year must be commended.

However, one niggling issue remains in that the country performed relatively poorly in the area of the registration of new businesses.

In the latest rankings, results revealed that Malaysia continued to underperform in the area of starting a business, coming in with a global ranking of 122.

Despite reform measures carried out over the years, it takes 9.5 procedures and 13.5 days to register a new business in Malaysia, compared with two procedures and 1.5 days in closest neighbour, Singapore.

By all measures, this is not a good thing as the speed of starting a business is an important indicator of a country’s overall level of efficiency and ease of doing business.

Why is there still so much red tape in an era where most things are supposedly technologically driven and therefore should be able to be addressed and completed quickly.

The old-school mentality of “this is the standard operating proce- dure or SOP” should be done away as much as it can possibly be.

Away from the registration of new businesses, red tape still exists in many facets of Malaysian society.

It is understood that in areas like healthcare, patients who are dependent on the government for assistance need to go through “many levels of SOP” before they can be accorded what they need. Is this fair to them?

Some SOPs are really not that necessary. Let’s hope the new government will push for more efficiency in the days to come.