PUTRAJAYA, Aug 16 ― The government saved around RM3.5 billion since implementing the National Blue Ocean Strategy in 2009, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak said today.
He said the strategy enabled them to create more projects at reduced costs, such as using existing empty buildings for Urban Transformation Centres (UTC).
“Existing underutilised buildings were swiftly renovated and modified, at lowest possible without compromising quality. In fact, by not constructing from scratch, we saved RM100 million for every UTC.
“Since there are 15 UTCs across the country, that means this approach saved us RM1.5 billion,” he said in his opening speech at the International Conference on Blue Ocean Strategy here.
UTCs are centres in the cities that provide key government and private sector services in the same building.
Najib further said the government saved RM1.3 billion when they repositioned 7,400 police officers from the desk to the streets for patrol, instead of hiring and training new officers.
The prime minister said another RM700 million was saved by having the police and military share training facilities.
He said the strategy was better than building vanity infrastructure and funding industries that keep making losses.
“If we had continued with the old policies, we would have found the government and country swimming in an ocean of red,” Najib said.
The National Blue Ocean Strategy started in 2009 with the aim to execute quality projects at low cost.
