Pemandu chief, too, shocked by ranking slide

Minister in Prime Minister's Department Idris Jala is also taken aback from the slide in the global competitiveness ranking released on Thursday.

Echoing the sentiments from a member of the Special Task Force to Facilitate Business (Pemudah), Idris said that he was also “surprised”.

However, he said that this could be due to the methodology of the report.

“If you choose a different 110 people, they'll have different views. So it depends who those people are who were interviewed,” he said.

He was speaking to reporters are the sidelines of the seminar themed 'How You Can Participate and Benefit from the Economic Transformation Programme' organised by the Associated Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur this afternoon.

“The point is this, they interviewed 110 people when we have 28 million people in Malaysia. So when you interview 110 out of 28 million, we have to factor the output.

“But I don't want to sound defensive. Whatever the report is, we take it as it is and we'll look at the details for the improvement. We'll spend time next week analysing the report.

“But the 110 people interviewed, that's their views but whatever it is, we'll accept it and move on,” he said.

Bad performance

In the report released by the Swiss-based Institute of Management Development, Malaysia's ranking was 16th out of 59 countries polled - dropping six places from its 10th place last year.

The IMD report was compiled from two-thirds quantitative or statistical data and one-third qualitative or perception data. The second part was obtained through feedback from the local private sector between January and April this year.

Out of the four main factors in the survey - government efficiency, business efficiency, economic performance and infrastructure - Malaysia had performed badly in first two factors.

Malaysia's ranking for "government efficiency" fell from 9th place to 17th while "business efficiency" fared the worst, falling from 4th place to 14th. “Infrastructure” also went down by two notches to 27th place.

However, “economic performance” went up one place to 7th this year.

Studying and improving

Despite that, Idris is rolling with the punches, saying that the report will serve as a guide to find ways to improve the country.

“We will look at areas of weakness and we'll find ways to improve. I think that's probably the best way to do it because we just got (the report) so we need to study it. So once we've done that, will be able to decide and make an improvement from there.

“I believe that in life, you'll look for areas you need to improve and you'll look for challenges as in the economy of our country. We'll look for areas of weaknesses and we'll improve on it,” he said.