KUALA LUMPUR, March 24 — The government needs to step up efforts to increase the demand for certified products among domestic consumers and enhance the country’s standards to meet international benchmarks.
The National Transformation Programme Annual Report 2017 stated that the focus on standards had always been to encourage business entities to obtain certification to improve their competitiveness, particularly those wishing to penetrate the export market.
“However, the drive to obtain certification is still dependent on export market requirements while certified products do not command a price advantage over non-certified products or produce. Consequently, local businesses would not see the value of obtaining certification,” it said.
The report noted that in liberalising the services sector, the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) would coordinate and oversee implementation of the Services Sector Blueprint (SSB).
The SSB outlines 29 action plans that transcend across four main policies, namely internationalisation of services firms, effective management of investment incentives, enhancing human capital development and enhancing sectoral governance integration.
In addition, the report called for continuous efforts by Malaysia Productivity Corp (MPC) to evaluate the business environment framework, especially in reducing unnecessary regulatory burdens for sectors such as information and communication technology, logistics and distributive trade, to improve the ease of doing business in Malaysia.
It pointed out that the Competitions, Standards and Liberalisation Strategic Reform Initiative (SRI) had brought many advancements to the nation in the past seven years.
These included an increased awareness of competition law, heightened standards of local products and services, and the progressive transition of the services sector to become more knowledge intensive and innovation-led.
Meanwhile, the Malaysia Competition Commission (MyCC) will continue its role of implementing and enforcing the Competition Act 2010 to ensure a conducive competition culture to make markets work well for consumers, businesses and the Malaysian economy.
The report said MyCC would remain focused on elevating awareness as well as educating stakeholders and the public on the importance of complying with competition laws.
Besides that, MyCC will continuously build and disseminate expertise in competition law through networking efforts.
Efforts to ensure a conducive environment for business are also undertaken by MPC. It has undertaken a series of specific regulatory reviews and developed the National Policy on the Development and Implementation of Regulations to establish good practices for the reform processes.
The report said the policy’s implementation included undertaking in-depth public consultations and regulatory impact assessments to ensure the new regulatory changes were sound and effective for the public and relevant industries in Malaysia.
Following this, among regulations that have been eased are, landing permits for chartered flights.
Prior to the exercise, on average it took seven days for cargo flights and 14 days for passenger flights to obtain landing permits against the best practice of two to three days.
This exercise has shortened the issuance of landing permits of charter flights to three days for cargo and passenger flights and reduced 70 per cent of documents for applications for domestic airlines and 30 per cent for foreign airlines.
The report said this improvement would have a tremendous impact in terms of stimulating trade, facilitating business efficiency and spurring economic growth.
It has also contributed to the larger objective of transforming Malaysia into the preferred logistics gateway to Asia. — Bernama
